Level 1: Love on the home front.
Tell me what Love is,
and
all its forms as defined by man?
Explain
to me how it manifests,
to
land alive in the palm of your hand.
*From pages 49, 52
A lot of people have given me
their feedback concerning this chapter and the following, next two. They certainly received mixed reviews. One person wanted me to be more graphic about
the intensely personal crimes you will read about. Another suggested I not write about them out
of a sense of fear and embarrassment.
And while the majority of these readers liked the way I wrote about my
experiences in an appreciated, understood fashion -- as parents or victims
themselves -- there was one voice who told me my views sounded too
“lofty”. While still another concluded I
was being too lenient and self-effacing.
No two set of responses were alike.
Everybody seemed to have his or her own individual opinion.
Change this. Change
that. Add a comma here, reformat your
wording there. Capitalize, don’t
capitalize. Delete this paragraph; edit
this sentence in its place. Stop trying
to be so visual. Don’t use your brain so
much. Add more passion. Your feelings
aren’t important in this situation; you need to stay more factual. Change, change, change…. Don’t, don’t, don’t. I about went nuts! A woman can only take so much input. A person can only please so much…. After
seven month’s worth of writing and rewriting, I’d been defined and redefined so
many times I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore. Somewhere in the foot steps of my life, I’d
been trained to mold myself around everybody else’s will accept that of my own
- and been taught to lose my own meaning.
Just to share with you how bad it got, not even did an
English grammar teacher, a paper editor, professional proofreader, or a
journalist agree alike, about what changes should to be made. Their punctuation rules weren’t even the
same. How everyone tried to dissect my
poetry was even more demoralizing. I
hadn’t included them to show myself off as the perfect poet. They’re insights. Clues.
Which are more apt to reveal my many weaknesses, longings, frailties,
and imperfections -- which is the entire point -- and why our products of
creativity serve as such valuable tools.
If it is grammatical perfection a person seeks from any written matter,
don’t look to a poet’s work to find it….
That’s what encyclopedias or dictionaries are for. Our insights and symbolisms are about us.
No two people I have ever met digest a poem in the same manner
anyhow. But I guess some minds just get
too hung up on the words to allow room enough to interject any other definition
but that of the “literal”. I was to soon
find out that learning to think in abstract terms is not always the easiest
concept for people to wrap their minds around.
To expect that absolutely no one would have any difficulty understanding
the metaphors of our lives without being shown how was a little unfair on my
part. Clairvoyants and psychics are all
trained to automatically pick out and interpret these situations as quickly as
we are met with them. That’s how we are
occupationally capable of doing what we do.
The process is not unlike the manner musicians have honed
their skills to interpret the symbols of musical notes in their
profession. Yet, I can’t think of a
single human being on this earth who thinks it is impossible for a non-musician
to learn how to play an instrument with the assistance of a teacher or feels
that’s odd once a person does, do you?
Our brains and bodies are the greatest instruments we have and our
hearts and souls hold the sweetest of melodies a person can ever hear. So I disagree with the general mentality that
this clairvoyant tuning in and higher reasoning are abilities that can not be
developed under any circumstance. Oh, I
believe people are much brighter than that!
The clash of wills was just about to begin, though.
Anything reflexive of my speaking voice was slated to go
out the door, as well. I spoke like me,
they spoke like them. What a mess. Couldn’t I get anyone to agree about
anything? The answer was no…. It was not remotely possible for me to tailor
my every experience, finding and sentence in such a way they were unanimously
accepted. But in my attempt to find
literary favor, that’s what I had inadvertently been trying to do. I was constantly rewriting my paragraphs to
embody their intellect, instead of mine.
One day, in early July of 2004, one local individual pushed so hard to
exert his influence over me by erasing out my concepts and insert in his own
thoughts, that he managed to erase me right out of my own work! I just fumed…. This person hadn’t even the
personal back-ground to tackle my topics of the subconscious and soul. He wasn’t a publishing editor, a religious
pastor, or even a fellow psychic whose expertise I could rely on as being
accurate. He was a local news employee
that I’d hired to help me clean up my less-than-perfect grammar! I sat there stunned. And I’m being “lofty”? I charged back. It was at that moment that it hit me.
“That’s my problem!
Everybody is being allowed to co-author and decide my life, but
me.” The stranglehold on my
individuality was deadening. “No wonder
I can’t seem to sort my feelings out anymore,” I finally realized. I’d been turning myself into a human
parrot! But how in heaven’s name did I
ever acquire such a diminutive position?
I’ve always had the knack of knowing how to cope with these attempts to
beat down my aptitude and pride with a wry sense of humor. But this was not a joking matter
anymore. An end to these assaults on my
person had to stop. I hated the thought
of going back in time, but I knew those answers could only be found one
way. Like it or not. I had to revisit the shadowy ruins of my
yesterdays and learn to take a good look at them and what they could reveal
about my torn identity.
Thank goodness my clairvoyant mind saw through my own
negative train of thoughts before I’d changed myself too much to undo the
damages. Oh my, but I did have a good
laugh at myself. There I was, a psychic
whose expertise it was to separate fact from fiction in people in order to help
them eliminate the illusions and falsehoods out of their lives, but yet, the
guiltiest of all of suppressing her own inner-most nature in a subconscious
cocoon. Once I stopped working against
myself, I finally figured out the problem
From pages 53-59
Without being aware of it as it was happening, my mind had
just received its first wake-up call.
The changes in me were subtle at first, but after a while I began to
take notice that with each unveiling of an internal nature I’d been compelled
to hide about myself, my footsteps became lighter and freer and my smile more
genuine. I’d just taken the first step
to real self-awareness: How to confront your own true feelings.
Over the course of this section, you are going to read
about rape, molestation and what the forces are that allow the cycles of deceit
to thrive. So, there’s been enough harm
done as it is without my adding more. I
chose to share these life events in order to demonstrate how the pivotal
moments of our lives can have such a profound affect on us that they can make
or break our self perceptions, and any greater potential we may have.
But don’t let any negative experience defeat you. Reversing this belief can be achieved to our
betterment. My hardest lesson was
understanding that bad things do happen to good people. Forget about Karmic remanifestation and put
it on a back burner of your brain for a while.
It is not the express intent of the universe for us to suffer pain. We
do a pretty good job of doing that all by ourselves. The taking of this third step was to be by
saving grace. A life spent in frightened
turmoil and tears was not meant to be my fate, after all.
We can take away
some valuable lessons from a horrible incident.
Difficult times don’t have to fracture, or ruin us. We can rise
above our own failures, self definitions and our many weaknesses. Children can
become our mentors and teachers, no matter how young they are. And yes, we can be touched by someone we
don’t know.
I had to sort of step outside myself in order to save my
own life in this chapter. It is the only
reason I can offer that explains why I narrate the events in the detached
manner that I do and in order to relive the experience with as minimal harm to
my emotional senses. Some memories are
better off treated differently the way they are. The events are not avoided or suppressed….
They’re just internally reenacted in such a way that their memory it is not as
slicing and sharp-edged as the reality was.
Maybe this tells you something about the horrific effect these
occurrences had on me. Maybe it
doesn’t…. Whichever the case, no person
should make the judgment call of concentrating on the crimes, when the emphasis
needs to be placed on the people’s feelings these events are more about. They are factual.
From pages 58-59
Whenever I look back on those years, I often ask myself
how my husband and I did not notice just how starved for love and family
security our friend, Neil, suffered from.
My instincts were of no help in this case. What ever feelings of longing I would pick up
on and would turn to conversation with Kenny’s father, never amounted to
anything worth my being frightened over.
He would simply relate how he wished he was married, too, and hoped the
girl he would wed some day was a lot like me.
Neil loved the fact that I was a European-born woman with a highly
intuitive nature, loved to write poetry, and wanted children. … Never
would I have guessed as a young wife just how unhealthy both these tendencies
toward me were. Without ever realizing
it, my young instinct to nurture had become the nucleus of both these men’s
worlds.
No matter how many times Doug or I would try to line up a
date for our lonely friend, he would angrily turn the offer down and accuse us
of wanting to get rid of him. The scene
would break my heart. Just the thought
of it would reduce him to tears, crying for us to please not to turn him out of
our lives. He also seemed very prone to
wild fantasies during these states.
Every little emotional wound he had ever suffered in his life was
super-sized ten degrees worse. Every
longing and heartfelt wish grew to even greater, unrealistic proportions. And any poem he ever recalled reading about
love and soul mates were fact, and written for him in the back of the poet’s
mind. Three guesses who his favorite
poet was? “Flights…” and “A Melody of
Love” were his two most beloved.
(Pages 28, 29) Whenever he’d
share one of these super imaginings, under the influence of too much to drink
usually, my husband would just shrug them off and chuckle. What we didn’t know was how Neil planned to
be the one to get in the last laugh.
I won’t go into the details because they really are
immaterial to the point of this story, but his plan would include my being
accosted under a ruse designed to get me far away from my husband’s protective
side, and held bound and hostage against my will for well over three and half
days in a desperate attempt to make his needs come true.
The ordeal was not pretty.
Out of his obsession, my captor had deluded himself into a fantasy world
that included me as his wife, and no longer my young husband’s. This meant I had to be “detoxed” as he put
it, away from my vows. To his twisted
way of thinking, my poetry and clairvoyant visions proved it, and no measure of
pain or method he could inflict was too extreme to convince me. Neil was that sure I’d married the wrong
man. If it took kidnapping, brutality,
sodomy, and repeated rape to break me down, so be it. He had plans to “re-educate” my mind and
feelings for him afterwards. I’m sure
everyone has gotten the picture by now; celebrities aren’t the only ones who
can become victims of obsession.
*From pages 63-64
No one knew of the exact location where he had me locked
in; it was in an entirely different state a couple of thousand miles away from
my temporary home and unsuspecting husband in
Somewhere in the process, I figured out his fantasy and
what his intentions ultimately included by the end of the first day. He hadn’t the plan of ever allowing me to
rejoin my husband. But as I laid there
naked, hurt and bound, I couldn’t overcome the odds of escaping him alive; he
was too intent of an adversary. Lord,
how I prayed, begged, pleaded, and cried for help. But all that did was waste what little energy
I had to try to think my way out of Neil’s insanity. I had to stay calm somehow, and knew
instinctively, I had to slow my breathing down and quell the panic state I was
falling into if I was to stand any chance at all. It was clear he was feeding off my frenzy,
confusing the intensity of my screams of pain, for passion. Then, at the lowest point of my lowest hour,
knowledge of how to escape began formulating from a place in my psyche I’d all
but forgotten was there. “Play his game,
Leedee. Give the performance of your
life if you have to. Play his game”
my inner voice kept repeating.