One of the worst things anyone could do in my presence is NOT listen to me when I say something seriously.
We all have someone in our lives who tries to diminish your statements of power. When I state something with a firm tone, Ms./Mr.Diminisher responds with their personalized version of what “you really mean”. Responses of “You don’t really feel that way!!” or the inevitable, “You don’t mean that!!!” are akin to waving a red flag in this bulls face.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have known who I was. I have full command of the power of my words. I know my own mind and I know how to express it. Why this has been challenged throughout my lifetime remains a mystery to me. It’s as if others somehow feel obligated to answer for me, or re-edit my words. Big mistake.
In my late thirties I was briefly dating a man who was a friend of my fathers. Briefly is the operative word here. For some reason this man, let’s call him Mr. Yawn, felt entitled to keep invading my privacy by showing up at my home and asking that I make him coffee, or lunch/dinner. Mr. Yawn only talked about himself- constantly. Because of his charming ways he never connected that his drinking problem coupled with his inability to tell the truth stood in the way of any healthy relationship with the opposite sex. In short, he was an invasive, egotistical, boring, selfish, attractive, funny pest.
One evening he showed up at my home totally inebriated and I asked him to leave. Promising me that he would be on his way, if he could only use the bathroom facilities, I acquiesced. After twenty minutes I scaled the stairs to the second floor to find him PASSED OUT DRUNK IN MY BED! This infuriated me. Try as I might I could not wake Mr. Yawn. Shouting and pushing him did not rouse him from his drunken slumber. It was at this point that my sense of right and wrong somehow separated.
I reached over, with matches in hand, and set the pillow case that he was resting his head upon on fire. Now, dear readers, in retrospect I can understand how crazy happens. I am living proof. But at the moment, my thoughts were clear.
Mr. Yawn you have disrespected me, and I know of a way to make you move!
Sitting on the floor, cradling my knees to my chest I stared calmly at his face. The flames began to slowly flicker and gather height, I whispered, “Fire. Fire.”
I embraced my successful strategy, as Mr. Yawn’s eyes flew open as he jumped onto the floor, pulling the offending pyro-pillow off the mattress. He ran into the bathroom with it, threw it in the tub and turned the water on, all the while screaming how I was a crazy woman and didn’t I know I could have killed him! Yes, well I knew that, but I didn’t care.
For years I kept the burned pillow case as a reminder, not of how crazy I could become, but of how I was justified to use all means possible to rid myself of invasive, overbearing pests.
Several years elapsed before Mr. Yawn started showing up to reprise his role as an egotistical bore. No matter where I moved to he would find me. No matter where I was working, he would show up. I tried valiantly to work on my inner calm, and have compassion. I kept telling myself that perhaps I owed Mr. Yawn some karmic debt, and maybe it was payback for some awful thing I had done in a past life.
Throughout the years I have had to endure listening to Mr. Yawn’s scams of how he bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars from his family and friends, of which he has none now. Showing mercy, when he needed a place to stay for “one night”, turned into several nights of him ranting non-stop, never sleeping, with paranoid delusions coupled with visions of revenge all the while scaring the heck out of my children. I wanted to believe he was harmless, but knew crazy when I saw it, and knew I wasn’t equipped to play psychiatric nurse.
The last three months of 2009 found me deep within a spiritual abyss and physical sickness. And in some Universe’s rule of balance, when your Soul sends out the signal that you are teetering on the brink of life, the vultures somehow sense the possibility of death and find you.
The early part of November I was beginning to realize how deathly sick I felt. Sitting in my favorite chair, wrapped up with a blanket, not caring how I looked, a knock came upon my front door. There stood Mr. Yawn asking if I would make him coffee. I had not seen him in seven years. In a weak voice I explained I wasn’t feeling very well, which a blind man could have deduced. Did that stop the bore? The bore whose only intent was to prattle on about himself for hours? Not one bit. Like the indentured karmic servant I am, still wrapped in my blanket, I shuffled to the stove and made coffee. Throwing cookies on a plate I delivered food and drink as he sat regally at my dining room table. Throwing myself back on my chair I tried in vain to tune his exaggerated tales out of my consciousness.
Towards the end of November another unwelcomed visit from Mr. Yawn haunted my doorstep. My Washingtonian, “I cannot tell a lie”, son-in-law answered the door and in a protective moment informed him that I was out with friends, when in fact I was curled up on a couch not fit to seen. My patience had reached an end. I could not fathom what these unwarranted visits were about. It’s not as if he ever asked about my life, or cared. These visits were a platform for Mr. Yawn to spin his tales of nonsensical reality. A reality that was all too distance from my own.
The 360 degree crazy came mid-December. My daughter was waiting for a friend to arrive, when the knock came upon my door. She opened it, and there he stood – like Poe’s Raven, which I seethed silently, “Nevermore!”
I traversed fifteen feet of floor in one jump. Screaming at this invasive specter I held his arm and turned him to the stairs to retreat to whatever borrowed vehicle he had arrived in. “What do you want? Why are you here? When have you ever, EVER cared about anyone but yourself? Never, EVER visit this place again! If you should see me anywhere in this world avert your eyes, you do not KNOW ME!”, I heard myself shout. My daughter, taken by surprise at my display of anger ran to her bedroom. The air crackled with electricity, and Spirits were thankful that I had spared his life.
Recovering a few days later from expending what strength I had, I was relating this story to a friend, who said to me, “Oh, don’t worry you didn’t mean it.” I slowly closed my eyes and made a quick excuse to end the call.
To all that know how much I hold Sacred Words to my heart – when you have had enough of crazy in your life throw it out the door and far away from you. Throw your voice to the six directions and empower yourself to distinguish what you want and do not want in your life and shout at the wolf to stay far, far away or you will strike it down. By doing so you will begin to heal the fragments from long ago.
Tags: being physically sick, crazy comes full spectrum, I cannot tell a lie, insufferable bores, Nevermore, Poe's Raven, saying what you mean, six directions, throwing your voice
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