CHAPTER 1

Cutting the Ties That Blind

   When Life overwhelms, we all have our obsessing vice vault to raid and escape into. For some it holds Cheetos, Ding Dongs, jogging, needlepoint, soaps, sports, TV, work, computers, gossip, golf, video games, shopping, cable news, spectator sports, Botoxing, sex chat lines or whatever focus we can indulge with human immunity.

   Whatever we can use to safely distract us from exploring the real reason we exist.

   For me, I was a Jigsaw Junkie. When Life's pressure cooker neared explosion, whenever I didn't want to face another mess I had gotten myself into, I could never devour enough jigsaws. I salivated for that ultimately satisfying interlocking demon... which of course never existed.

   Ergo! Withdrawal shakes crept into my system as the pieces diminished to a one box load. As the last piece pressed in, I envisioned the next opiate tempting me from my nearby shelf.

   Every mall with a game shop caused my heart to sensually palpitate. What new high awaited to falsely tease me with ultimate satisfaction?

   God! Was I in need of great sex, a passionate art project, an epiphany or what?

   Then, many years ago, in one fated flash, as my eyes reddened from an all night binge with a massive 1500 piece obsession (wow! was I in need of a passionate hug) that familiar Little Voice nudged me from within:

   "It's time for you to kick this addiction! It's consuming your spirit! Why are YOU avoiding YOU?"

   Soaked with virtual exhaustion, I slumped into my chair thinking: "Hey, Little Voice, I know you're right! This has gone too far! I almost caught myself cutting a piece so it would fit. But how do I quit? There's no Puzzleholics Anonymous!"

   "Look into your WHYS," I was softly told. "WHY you crave this escape only when the logical world seems to fall apart. See the connection and you'll see the cure."

   I agreed to obey my Little Voice―but only after I finished this one last jigsaw fix.

   Wrong. The philosophical tennis match had begun to play on my brain court.

   "The picture you're assembling holds a key. It's no coincidence you chose it and it chose you."

   OK. I looked deeper. It portrayed a giant black and white, blank crossword puzzle―a mind sucker. Hey! Two vices in one. As usual towards the end of my jigsaw ritual, I silently panicked. "Did the manufacturer forget that one last piece?"... while never questioning how that manufacturer would know what last piece I would snap in place.

   Within I heard: "No way. Too clinical."

   Aha!

   The answer for my addiction rang through my brain like an annoying cell phone. I was hooked on puzzles and crosswords because I felt they were the only predictable venues on this Earthian Game Board. The only Game where everything fit a designated spot. I craved them because I saw them as the antithesis of existence as defined by the decoys of traditional reasoning.

   "What makes you so sure they're opposite?," asked the Little Nag forcing me to explore the parallels.

   This dare was a definite call for boarding my imaginary hot air balloon―the levitator I used over the years whenever I sought an escape from the mishmash of planetary madness, whenever I craved climbing to the observation level for spiritual clarity and a hiatus of humor.

   Soaring behind my thankfully closed eyelids, the similarities between jigsaws/crosswords and life came into focus. I saw how everything we choose to do, and that which does unto us, always fits into the personal portrait of the finest person we can be―if we're open to the notion that every event in our life holds the possibility of being a clue as to why we exist.

   I sensed how every encounter offers us a needed Answer or Experience Piece to complete who, what and why we are, the choices of who we can become, plus what and how we're born to serve.

   The soul difference between a Celestial Puzzle and the cardboard variety is that with a Celestial Puzzle, we never get to see the final picture to know what the heck we've been creating until we're over and out of our current lifal journey.

   Sure. We get occasional glimpses. We fit a few pieces here and there that connect. We then archive them on abstract spaces of our board hoping they'll one day add up to matter to the whole picture puzzle.

   However, we often fill in the most obvious sections first. For some it may be the business portion of their puzzle, and then assume: "Aha! That's what my Life Picture is all about! I'm here to focus all my energy on my career!"

   Or, we may fill in faces, be they a mate, kids, or family members and assume: "Aha! That's my Picture Purpose! I'm here only to serve others, not me... unless of course I choose to minor in martyring."

   Or, we may fill in a section featuring endless closets, fancy cars, escalating bank accounts, the control panel over other people's lives, and assume: "Aha! For sure! That's what my life is all about! I'm here to accrue and control!"

   Yet, if that conclusion could be so easily and quickly seen, it wouldn't be a puzzle.

   That may simply be another decoy, since there is always more to now than is logicly apparent.

   I sense this because:

Since Life is a spiritual question,
how can it have a material answer?

   Not that stuff isn't neat, fun and comforting, but stuff is no more than Game Clues & Tools to help us create the greater picture of who we are evolving to be. Of what we're here to do. Of why we're attending and serving in this Cosmic College of Karmical Knowledge called Earth.

   As that night crept toward morning, my obsession with puzzles capsized. I experienced the ultimate high as pieces of my life began floating into place beneath my very eyelids. Pieces I had not noticed that were connectable.

   I saw how even the most seemingly pointless pieces can be linked to the greater picture when seen without prejudgment. Without presuming we know where they go.

   I also noticed the significant affect others may have on our Personal Picture when they visit our Game Board, adding their input, be it via a simple comment, an action, even a non-action.

   I saw how rarely we realize their affect upon us when it occurs, or how we may affect another's journey. Affect by even a little castaway comment such as a parent saying to a child: "You're lazy! A slacker!" Or, an observer saying: "You've really got talent and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise!"

   I saw how even one word or facial reaction, one song lyric or image can have a life altering impact on our private picture of why we exist. Positive or negative.

   Immediately I understood what triggered my Jigsaw Jazz. It was my desire for something in everyday life to make immediate sense, to know where everything fit. Fast Food for Thought. Whenever it didn't, I ran away to Jigsaw Junction or Crossword Corners.

   I ran whenever I got what's called a writer's block or what I call a Life Block. Whenever I felt paralyzed by confusion, frustration, anxiety and plain ol' poppycock.

   My balloon trips urged me to see:

   Life always makes sense spiritually―though not mortally. And just because we cannot see the portrait of our soul that we're constantly assembling from the lower Earthian level, does not deny the existence of the higher design.

   Every moment holds a clue leading to and forming who and what we are and why. Acknowledged or not, our reality matters... just not logically. Not immediately.

   And if we pick up a Clue Piece and can't figure where it goes and put it down, not to worry. Life will keep shoving it in our face, over and over, until we see its significance and apply it in our life.

   For instance, just because an Aborigine cannot imagine a microwave, a DVD or Madonna, does not mean they don't exist. Our reality is relative to our conscious level of awareness. We can only download the data we have programmed ourselves to accept on our See Drive. The more we are open to accept the "illogical", the more clues we are given.

   Life only becomes incomprehensible when we struggle to logically piece it all together because so much that occurs within us, to us and around us relates on levels we may have no basis to consciously identify.

   Stress is unavoidable when we deny the greater reason for Life based on our mortal inability to instantly perceive and define it.

   Puzzle Pieces spiraled through my head, linking on their own. I soon read the title for my Life Puzzle that had been blaring since kidhood: We're All Alone In This Together participating in a Spiritual Game to which we pays our quarter and takes our chances... and choices.

   I saw how I had been complexicating simplicity.

   I saw why the only area in Life any of us are able to control is our own attitude. And why the only growth card we're responsible for advancing is our own.

   We may share our crib sheets, experiments and notes with mates, friends, family and others, but we can never do the converting nor changing for another nor take their tests, as they cannot take ours.

   It never works because we don't know what another's Life Puzzle is. It never works. Ask any woman who married a travelin' man or a sports fan and thought she could transmute his spirit via marriage into a dutiful stay at home romantic guy.

   Again, a poppycock waste of time.

   As we can't proxy diet for another, we also can't proxy live another's purpose for life, as others cannot do for us, no matter how much they try. And boy, do so many try!

   The most common taste of this mutual frustration is when dominating parents believe they have the duty and right of directing their kid's adult choices and lifal journey. It never works, except for upping the sale of bicarbs.

   As I've noticed, the game of running other people's lives is just another escape from facing one's own life.

   I then realized that during my past, I was often overwhelmed and stressed only when I donned my Cosmic Girl Scout uniform. When I felt my mission in life was to help everybody over to the sunnyside of the street―whether they wanted to go or not.

   I finally realized that there are a lot of people on this planet who gain great joy from misery, whining, bitching, suffering and most of all from Drama Queening and Kinging. Most talk shows make a mint off them because misery does love company and high ratings.

   What an idiotic tug-of-war I had thrown myself into. I wanted others to be happy when they enjoyed being unhappy. Nothing wrong with them, I was just playing with the wrong team - for me.

   I also maxxed out when I sought to live another's mishmash as my own. Rushing in to lighten their burdens via deluding myself into thinking I was here to ease their pain by adopting it as my own.

   Wrong!

   I simply escalated my pressure cooker with pointless rushes of artificial anxiety. As you cannot proxy jog for another, proxy picture paining is equally useless. Not meant to be if true growth is to happen. Mine and theirs.

   Heck! If we have only fragmentary access to exactly what our Picture Puzzle portrays, what we are each born to do and be, how can we assume what another is born to create? Or, where they are headed? Or, why?

   I cut the ties that blind by realizing:

   As I do not make others responsible for my life, so too I am not responsible for how they choose to live―or not live. Their life is none of my business, as mine is none of theirs.

   I finally saw why we're only liable for creating the best life we can with whatever stuff meanders onto our Game Board, and striving to whatever degree we can to make our spot in this world a sweeter place for having been born. Then let others participate only if they choose.

   I saw why we cannot force others to be happy campers. Nor to camp our way. Nor to love or approve of us as we choose to live. Nor to validate our choices, no matter how we are pressured by controllers.

   We cannot buy another's endorsement, approval or love for our life styles and choices with our soul. It's too high a price.

   We're the only ones responsible for our joy, or lack of it, and whether our life is busy or boring.

   The joy we live is a result of the joy we self-kindle. So too, our joy can only be shared when and if others desire to receive joy from us.

   We can lead someone to our heart but we can't make them love us. We can invite someone to our party (be it a marriage or a friendship) but we can't make them enjoy it.

   We're merely separate Players in this Godian Game. Classmates in this Cosmic College born to study our own courses in our shared ventures. All alone in this together.

   In short, I finally understood why "I Gotta Be Me!" and love me first. Why that's true for everyone. And why we're the only ones who can fill our loving cup so we can then let it overflow to serve others―if they choose to partake.

   And why, if anyone else, be they parent, mate, child or whoever approves of whatever the heck we're doing, that's pure gravy. Not the meat of the issue. Not the focus. Not what we're to hinge our life and worth upon.

   I also realized why Selfish is a Positive Passion if and when it means we are being kind to our souls, exploring our spirituality and why we exist, and not allowing outside negativity to contaminate our worth, beingness and our journey.

   Selfishness can be very freeing as there's a lot more to serve life when your cup is full. Plus, others are more welcoming because you're not pushing them to live your version of their life.

BOTTOM LINE:
There's no way on Earth we can live up to our potential
nor speak our piece and peace in life
if we're simultaneously struggling to please the world-at-large.
Or control our neighboring world.

   So too, there's no possible way to be true to our soul and be liked by everyone. Heck! Even God hasn't done it!

   Ergo! That puzzle night freed me to write this journal. To see that all the seemingly disjoined pieces of my past may indeed be a valid picture to share. My thoughts also dissolved the rusty shackles of needing to please anyone except my conscience. And, that is a primo biggie for me.

   The biggie of not giving unlimited weight to what others think, be it praise or in the vicinity of "this stinks!."

   It was a biggie causing me to think:

Possibly the only way any of us get to observe
how much we've grown
is when we are faced with conflicts
that in the past quickened our pulse into
a Gregory Hines double-tap,
but now simply elicit calm reactions
and reflective insights.

   Familiar conflicts are so often just Lifal Pop Quizzes for us to re-assess our newly acquired maturation.

   I bet we could all measure our own growth if we simply listened to our inner responses when currently faced with oh-so-familiar stress setups of the past.

   Responses like:

   Hey! In the past this insult would've destroyed me! Or made me hide in the shadows of doubt! Or silence! Or pushed me to a damaging implosion! Or caused me to pull up denial covers to hide from my fears! Or caused me to grab all the blame for this battle so as to douse memories of madness―though not extinguish them!

   Or whatever the automatic defense was when life forces us to see the infernos we stoked and the antidotes we denied.

   Possibly reruns of past anxiety programs that we now conquer are actually the primo mirrors life offers us to say: "Hey! I've really grown as much as I want to believe!"

   Reruns jolt us into acknowledging our evolutions.

   They force us to recognize we're no longer feeling the need to claw for control over whatever or whoever is out of our control, be they spouse, child, parent or friend.

   Those mirrors also enable us to view our past through detached reality, like rear-view mirrors help us see the cast of our past as it really was.

A way to get our hindsight ahead of us.

   A way for a nightmare infested adult to de-pedestal kidhood abusers and controllers. A way to examine the need to dump the retarding garbage of taking responsibility for how others chose to mistreat us. A way to recognize that as kids we were induction by birth, impotent extras in others' personal program, be it comedy or tragedy. A way to acknowledge that as unhappy spouses, we were not drafted, we volunteered, which balances responsibility.

   Not to put the Blame on Mame, nor mom and pop.

   Not to transpose personal pain into vengeance. Rather to reprogram our own systems without the drain of chaos cluttered data banks. A way to acknowledge how we may be helping or harming our own attitude growth.

   Then to acknowledge: Though we may not have received the nurturing love and support we wanted as kids or spouses, that does not cancel our capacity to self-nurture.

   To paralyze our spirits just because others have chosen to by-pass theirs is a terrible waste of love.

   It's a denial of a centurial truth:

   There's an ecstatic sensation to discover we have personal access to press the Master Delete Button on Misery, to make room for all the goodie discs we formerly rejected when we refused to rate ourselves good enough to receive. When we gave others the power to dictate our worth and the direction of our life.

   As I spatter these letters onto the screen, I know the details of my journey are personal. Yet, my path has been parallelled on many levels by others.

   Life's Game has shown me that I was not the solo traveler I once thought. The Abuse Route harbored a very crowded passenger list.

   However, once I chose to chart a new course, I was free to reprogram a personal flight plan that my kidhood, tyrannized by my mother's kamikaze course, might have tricked me into believing was irreversibly set up for my own self‑destruction. As in, she likes misery therefore I should live misery? I don't think so.

   Getting from then to now wasn't easy, it took a few wacky marriages, a lot of gigolos, plus career roller coasters.

   Gutting garbage out of one's private care-house is a smelly job at best. It rouses aching tussles. It hurts. It heals. But most of all, it's worth it.

   Ergo! This alphabet scoop is my flight log on how I launched myself out of my uncomfort zone. This is my graduation diploma from a past that offered endless human seminars and clues of what not to do―once I chose to learn from them. Not martyr off them.

   This personal catharsis is a gift from me to me... and now to you, if you choose to accept. My Street Savvy was the lifesaver that freed me to jump shit from past limitations of feeling like a powerless mate on other's bruise cruises.

My lifesaver sang one simple message:
We do get to name our own tune!

   Sure. Mine is a lay person's guide. I'm not a therapist. But I have had on-the-job-experience as an abused kid/wife and self abuser. I also learned how to shed the barnacles of guilt, doubt, masochism, silent anger and the heaviest chain of all: Denial of Self.

   Hey! Possibly I am a P.H.D. via becoming a:
Personal Heart Director.

   Piecing this journal together has been my paramount puzzle poser. Though I always lived on the edge of RISK, of Recognizing Isolated Spiritual Knowledge, this is the most significant migration I've ever taken as I'm challenging the deepest dread I've harbored.

   The dread of fully awakening my Kid self to my Now Self and exposing her to the outside world.

   Though I laced my kidhood with humor and endless escapes into tangible creativity, it was dominated with monstrous memories I thought were erased many years ago when my family dissolved.

   The memories I discovered were still imprisoning me from fulfilling my ultimate concept of happiness. Inhibiting me from daring to realize all I could be.

   Then about 5 AM, as I went through that cold turkey of not even peeking at the next untouched puzzle box within tempting distance, I spontaneously declared my quest to the full moon's light rippling through the curtains.

I want to solve the puzzle of my life!

   I wanted to see exactly why I was not overflowing with the pleasure I knew I had the ability to create. I wanted to know exactly what I needed to do in order to begin going beyond OK. So, I asked myself some questions.

• "What are the greatest desires for my life―and why?"

• "What are my greatest fears―and why?"

   Answers fired through me as if they'd been forever on hold, waiting to be called, which was probably quite true.

   I realized what had paralyzed my spirit before was that I was thinking more than I was feeling. When I stopped analyzing logicly, everything came into focus.

   I knew I had to get genuine without trying to be so damn nice and taking so much needless crap from so many not nice people in my life who had no consideration for my happiness, pleasure, worth nor getting to know my real Me.

   My Be Nice Vice caused me to muzzle my Inner Me in order to Keep The Peace for everyone else.

   I was eating myself alive.

   I gave so much of me away that I lost where I went.

   My toughest challenge was how to live an uncensored life with my mother, most men and pretty much everyone else. How to stop double-chatting. How to prioritize what I had to say to others to please them versus what my soul wanted to honestly and nicely say.

   To Be Nice according to my spirit or Not To Be Nice according to not-nice other judgements, that was my primo puzzle. And primo exhaustion!

   Problem was: I like nice. Yet, I had to say what others wanted to hear so as to survive. Again, I was in Sybil City. Not in my Heart's Home Town.

   In time I realized that whatever I was sensitive about I noticed in others. Like when I wear a red dress, I notice everyone else in red. When I had dental problems, I noticed everyone else's teeth.

   So too, when I noticed my leftover reactions from having been an abused kid and controlled spouse, I noticed similar behavior in others. Though that was sad for me, I also realized I was definitely not alone as I thought I was for oh so many years.

   As a kid, teen and young adult, everyone I saw in person or on TV or in movies seemed so constantly Happy! Happy! Happy!, that I thought I was an outsider in Life's Party.

   Oprah shows didn't exist then so how was I to know I wasn't living in solitary emotional confinement?

   Yet, paradoxically, I must have also appeared as a Happy Camper. I was naturally happy yet intensely working my talent for multi-personas.

   My Public Self was genuinely outgoing, joyous, hugging and humorous. My Home Self was stress-filled, censored from expression and terrified of triggering another's anger. However, my Inner Self always saw through the Crap Games and thought: Hey, God, WHY? Why am I caught in this madness? This bizarre game? Is it punishment? Is my role in this life a mistake? Am I a mistake?

   Though it took years of self-honesty to assemble my Personal Puzzle, it was worth it. I now know that every filament of the past was constructing a perfect picture.

   Everything served to create the woman I am now and am becoming. Nothing was an accident nor a punishment.

   Not that I'm perfect, whatever the heck that is.

   But now I accept no crap, no petty judgments nor

   toxic transfers from others. I no longer pick the paddle up to get involved with another's Grudge nor Guilt Games.

   Ergo! I've learned how to be genuinely joyous via interlacing all my 3 selves: Public, Personal and Inner Spirit.

   After all these hard fought and crazy years, I am the Genuine Me on all fronts.

   True. Integrating my 3 MEs was not easy. But it was worth it. I don't curse my past madness nor abusers and confusers. I probably confused them as much as they did me. Yet I embrace them all for being the passing-ships-in-the-right that they were, as I hope I was for them. They were Godian Gifts to my spirit, once I understood them.

   I'm sharing my observations with you because I sense what I learned could pave turnarounds or awakenings for you and others... or not. If not, at least I tried.

   The impulsive mood swaddling that former night's solitude urged my fluidity of observations. Truth surfaced void of the coverups I formerly used to keep the world, and myself, from examining my kidhood and adulthood emotions.

   For so many years I programmed myself to forget or deny cruelty. I forced myself to buy verdicts that I was the "bad one," the cause for all frustration, sorrow and temper. I sucked up accountability so as to keep others on fantasy pedestals, including my mother and ex-husbands.

   I was so eager to be wrong so others would seem right, even when they were long gone, that I was unaware of my continuing to play star receiver in The Blame Game.

   As a kid I learned to think and say "What did I do wrong now?". First with my mother then others and mates. Since as a kid I naturally felt I was the center of my world, I thought if anyone was unhappy, it must have been my fault, something I did wrong. So how can I make it all OK?

   Soon I graduated to saying "I'm sorry!"... for what? I rarely knew.

   Then when I became more alert to the reality that everyone feels they are the Center of their own Universe, I still kept saying "I'm sorry!", when anyone was bitching, whining or drama queening or kinging, except I silently thought: Shut up! Knock it off!

   Still being a Survivor-In-Progress, I'm learning to say "I'm sorry" only when I've done something to be sorry for, not just to silence a complainer... which never worked.

   My night-dares forced me to acknowledge the suffocating stalemate my fear of seeming "not nice" had created. How could I go public as a spokeswoman against abuse while I lived under the ax of outsiders discovering my mother's and exes' abuse of me? I'd be a hypocrite.

   I wasn't afraid of success. I was afraid of what success might evoke from my kidhood and wifehood closets. My fear was energized by my mother's hostility and control that haunted my adultself. The never knowing when hell would surface. Same with my ex-marriages.

   By never having been given an understandable reason as a kid as to why my mother vented her personal hysteria upon me, the logical side of my brain that was in search of motives began assuming: "I must have done something bad!" And not knowing what that something was became a lifelong puzzle, rationalizing into: "Gee, I must be bad!"

   The eternal coverup that my denial triggered made it a bitch to sort out my adult frustrations because I was only examining the Band‑Aid, not the hurt. Nor the toxin that generated the hurt.

   Having escaped the nightmares that colored my kidhood, for many years I tricked myself into thinking I was free. But I never felt a resolve. I was left holding the slag by never having seen the responsibility debit for what occurred placed into the hands of the one who originated it.

   Ergo, it dangled in mid-heir.

   Even after 20-plus years of no contact with my mother after she disappeared, I dreaded her finding me and destroying my life. What power I gave her!

   The scared kid inside me still stirred, trapped in a time warp as I dared not tell anyone about her actions for fear of not being believed... or loved.

   After all, mother was―Tah Dah!―The Adult!

   And, as with most abusers, parental and marital, they often seem publicly untouchable. After all, I was just the kid to be rarely seen or heard, let alone believed... also true for a surrendered wife who wants the public (and herself) to believe she has a picture perfect marriage when it ain't so.

   Somehow my kidself forgot one new detail: I, too, am an adult. I have the right to examine my past devoid of pose colored glasses. I have the ability to cut the ties that blind.

   Facing my greatest dread caused renewal of my secret fright show. If I go public and share my truth with others, the possible consequences are that she will blackmail me into servitude for how I made her "suffer." Or hop on a financial bandwagon or call the Inquirer's hot line to say "It never happened! She was a bad kid! Oh, how I suffered, and this is the thanks I get? Well! Let me sell you a story or two!" (Same too with my exes!)

   My reaction may seem bizarre, but so was my kidhood. Heck! So is life, as are many kidhoods. And many wifehoods.

   However, my freedom to share my thoughts in this book is stimulated from having no desire for revenge nor secreted anger toward anyone.

   Rather, I hope that by scrapping off the fear barnacles I allowed to handicap my spirit for so many years, I might also help another to see why and how they can scrape their heartships clean of dis-ease. How they can launch themselves on self‑charted waters devoid of the emotional pollution of the past. How they can stop allowing others to steer their life ship.

   By publicly sorting the pieces of my life, possibly I might motivate another to create personal escapes from the ones I created to flee the Woes Gardens Of My Past and move up to the Garden Of Eatin' from life's smorgasbord.

   A joyous spread that was always available had I not put myself on a high assault diet of life-beaters.

   My journal is simply a venue for sharing street savvy strategies that I concocted to fuel my Flight to Freedom. Freedom as a once-self-sentenced inmate on Restriction Row to (at last!) being my most enthusiastic cheerleader.  

   So, with a vow to keep my prose clean, a pledge to not make myself neither a victor nor victim, let's unfasten our safety belts and explore this interlocking puzzle box and see where the pieces fit!

Postscript:

   On that revelationary night, I pieced my last jigsaw! I kicked the interlocking habit, broke them all down, boxed them and sold them at my next yard sale with a warning:

ASSEMBLE AT YOUR OF RISK
But it's a lot more fun
assembling your own Puzzle Picture!
I know... that's why I'm selling these.

Copyright © 2006 by Krystiahn - All Rights Reserved