CHAPTER 32

Unfasten Your Safety Belt,
We’re Landing in the Light

   After arriving at the hospital, the procedure I was led though felt more like a senseless TV rerun than reality. Though I asked for some pain killers, they refused as the doctor would not be able to draw clear feedback to what was ailing me. Oh, well.

   The neighbor had left, still speaking of her fear of Les learning that she had gotten involved. So, mortally, I felt ultimately alone.

   I was wheeled out to the hallway because due to some city script, the ER had become the hottest ticket in town. Waiting for them to call my number at this ache-ery became an endurance of agony.

   Lying on that solid slab called a gurney, with eyes tightly shut, I began pacing the secluded valleys of my mind and begging the Godian Family to let me come Home. I wanted out of my body. I wanted out of my life. I wanted out of the pain. I wanted out. Desperately. Spiritually. Physically.

   My wish was granted with a zilling rush. As if a magician's wand had swept my body from head to toe, its throbbing silenced. I felt as if I had instantly shed an oversized lead coat of oppressive weight. I felt I could fly without trying.

   By feeling no pain, my curiosity kicked in to check if that lemon lump on my forehead also vanished. With eyes still closed, I reached up to grope for the spot. Not only could I not find the lump, I could not find my body.

   My first impulse was panic, as a chilling fright deadened my thoughts. Was I unable to find me because I was totally paralyzed?

   “NO!” I silently screamed. “This is not what I begged for! I want out of life — not out of living!”

   I regained equilibrium by unlocking my refusal to probe my surroundings. With that inner directive, I instantly saw the true condition that my condition was in.

   I could not feel my body because I no longer occupied it. Rather I hovered above myself — an ultimate detachment.

   As I looked down on the swelling backlash of my Happy Camper Crusade, time slowed as my body, on the gurney, became enveloped within a frame of glistening white fog — similar to Rip Taylor's plethora of silvery white confetti exploding into an all encompassing panorama.

   I was suddenly cloaked with a golden luminescence and each fibre of my un‑beingness was permeated with love. I loved her/me on the gurney. I loved God and the intricate complexity of the Earthian life visits.

   But, I did not love the idea of living one more moment in that body, in the life she/me had created. I wanted out. And the familiar warmth and loving ecstasy I felt as I hovered was not discouraging my desire to go Home for a little R&R — Rest & Regrouping.

   As I scanned the bruising upon her/my face, I sensed the slow motion and muffled sound of people passing the gurney, while at the same time, the feeling of a crowd forming around my hovering level was amplifying with very familiar and friendly energies.

   I felt two loving arms embrace the non-shoulders of my spirit, one male and one female guardian. Their missives blended into one silent counsel as they telepathed guidance for me to rethink my haste for leaving so soon. Too soon.

   As I deeply tried to identify who they were, my perception of she/me on the gurney diminished to a distant pinpoint. The white fog expanded to include two very loving visions seeking to gently, but firmly, tell me why I could not renege on the Covenant I signed for this life and enter-mission.

   They reminded me that there was no way I'd be allowed to leave before the completion of my pre-agreed obligations.

   Their communiqué caused me to rerun all the near fatal accidents I endured to that point in time, including the car crashes I survived from which I always emerged without even a scratch or traffic ticket.

   I recalled one particular collision when an icy winter street caused my car to skid out of control and crash into a tree, a house, an unoccupied car, and a huge slab of construction wood careening through my driver's side windshield. I re-called my saving was my choosing not to wear a seat belt and an invisible hand pushing me over to the passenger side.

   As police examined the wooden harpoon that had gorged my driver's headrest, they called my escape a miracle. I call it Godian Protection.

   Then I recalled my brief stint into the soaring whirl of free fall parachuting. I was to jump with a familiar group when we were unexpectedly joined by Chard, a new guy. As the plane reached our target, everyone jumped. Chard and I being last.

   The deep breath of indistinct anxiety that I inhaled proved to be quite prophetic when the cords on both my main and backup chute failed.

   As the earth spread beneath me like a giant patchwork quilt, I became curiously calm as I laughed at the approaching irony: I have to go down in order to go up and off this planet. The paradox was suddenly broken by my strappings being jerked, as a giant white cloud/chute unfurled above me.

   It was Chard who held me in his powerful grasp as we corkscrewed through the air. Though we landed way off course in a woodsy area, neither of us had a scratch nor a broken bone. After Chard checked me out for any injuries, he told me to close my eyes, breathe rhythmically and relax while we waited to be rescued.

   A truck soon screeched up to our location. As I sat up to greet my buddies, I realized there was no sign of Chard — just his open parachute that laid limply upon the ground near my head, part of it having been rolled by Chard as a makeshift pillow. My chutes were still locked in their casing.

   After a frazzled reunion with my buddies, we all realized that no one knew Chard. We each thought he was someone else's friend. When we got back to the airport and looked at the flight log, his name no longer appeared in it.

   Again, they called it a miracle. Again, I realized it was indeed Protection.

   Then there was the time that smoking saved my life! I was approaching a busy highway via an empty on-ramp, when I suddenly felt urged to have an “immediate” cigarette. As I slowed down to light up, a massive eight car pile‑up crash occurred due to an out of control semi jackknifing before my vision, like a scene from a Peckinpaw movie.

   Those few seconds that I was stalled protected me from slamming into a horrendous metal and glass melee. Though I was not privy to the fate that directed the other drivers to participate in the episode, I couldn't deny the Force that held me back from involvement in that crash.

   As I ladle this alphabet scoop on my computer screen, I also realize the umpteen hundred experiences to date when I've been protected. I now know I was not accident prone yet lucky, I was message prone so as to understand I was not to leave until I was complete.

   The happenstance of my escaping near fatal accidents is not a singular setup simply for me, it's a signal for anyone who has endured such miracles to realize life is screaming its slangy cosmic message:

   “Ya ain't finished, kiddo! So, kick your butt into gear to not only figure why you're being rescued, but what all these beans are seeking to spill so that you will complete your reason for this current existence.”

   But meanwhile, back to my hovering hospital...

   Many more comparable memories flashed through my mind of the protection I always had, protection I related to no one outside of my GUT Buddy, my nanny not wanting me to get hurt. Protection that literally came out of the wild blue wonder.

   The telepathed voices cut short my sprint down memory lane with:

   “If your life is as meaningless as you now think, simply due to the past abuse you endured from other's anger with themselves, why have you been given ceaseless protection?

    No life is meaningless, there is always a Plan. Your Plan simply has automatic protection. This is a tangible indication that you cannot cancel the covenant since your mission is greater than the few mortal minuses you have encountered.

    Is it not possible that in order for you to feed others in the future, it is necessary for you to experience the hunger?

    We know your soul is driven with loving spiritual curiosity for the whys in the lies, for the sense in the nonsense. Let that curiosity guide you toward the future. Your body shall quickly heal as you were not sent to be scarred. But it's now up to you to heal your emotional scars by transmuting them into strength.”

   The glimmering white mist that surrounded my spirit and my two friendly visions was suddenly paled by an impossibly brighter white light that vibrated through my soul like a spiritual shock treatment. Accepting I was not now meant to de-Earth, I asked this magnificent Light for strength to return to my current life.

   That potent energy advised me that I had the strength, I simply turned off my powers for a brief moment in time. As I accepted that verity, every question I asked was answered before I could complete the internal voicing of my thoughts.

   As I asked about my mission, my purpose, I heard:

   “In a sense, your purpose is to care for others, to love, to enjoy, to play, to enlighten and to share this ability so that others shall have the opportunity to energize that element within their own beingness.

    You were not sent to struggle by thinking you are here to individually focus your energies on those who choose to be in denial of their God-Self, those who thrive on their anger with their own existence, those who war with the contract they promised to fulfill during this journey.

    As your DENIAL, your public negation or concealment of your gifts has been your private issue to overcome, due to your dread of being ostracized from regular acceptance for your gifts, so too, DENIAL of their inner light by others is the issue for those you have privately interacted with, those who shall constantly seek to war with you in the future.

    Simply understand that they will war with you not because of anything you consciously do to them, but because your encouragement may threaten their resistance to living life to the fullest. It is very simple.

    You're not here to work on that dissolute level, as it pulls you into the muck and mire, it frustrates your greater design for Beingness by choking your spirit with the hostile energies of the Earth field.

    No more drinking from that poisonous goblet of others’ anger unless you ask for that experience. If you do, then accept the purpose for that experience. Feel it, taste it, resonate in its passion, then extricate yourself once you have drawn the messages from it that you shall later share on a greater global basis.

    Use your curiosity and gifts. You have not been allowed to bring them with you into this life by chance, by accident... nothing is without significance.

    You shall be Home soon, in terms of Earth time.

    You shall return happier for completing your mission and fulfilling your promise to the covenant, to us, to your soul.”

   As I listened to my spiritual Life Savers, my Godian Guardians, my grandest of GUT Buddies, I could not deny their energies. Nor deny my curiosity that they spoke of.

   Indeed, the more I became curious about my Les-less future upon this planet, the more I became jazzed about exploring my Covenant.

   So too, the more I was altering the state of my heart. Pain was returning into my perception of my self, and the noise of the crowded hospital corridor was exploding like a sudden power surge through me, a thrust of a high volume radio.

   I was reoccupying my body.

   While indeed I was jazzed via truly knowing there was a purpose for my current journey beyond what I had felt, I was also quite homesick via perceiving that I had just been comforted by my spiritual family and might not so closely reunite 'til I was over-and-out of this experience. Upon thinking that thought, I heard:

   “We are always here, always protecting you, always have, always will be, always — all ways — available for counsel.

    Ask, listen and you shall know this to be true. Live with love and peace. Live for love and peace. You are never far from your heavenly Home when you let the joy of your soul guide your words, your actions, your choices.”

    “Remember: As there is always purpose for every birth that every soul experiences and for every soul who is connected to that experience, so too, there is purpose for every departure — every death, as it is called upon the planet — purpose within every experience and for every soul who is connected with that departure.

    You cannot leave now, as there is no purpose for your exodus from Earth. As you accept this fact, you shall then free your soul to accept the fact of what you are here to accomplish. As you accept, so shall you do.”

   Indeed. Having accepted the truth that I was to fulfill my life's intent, having accepted the higher guidance I was gifted with that night, everything within me and about me began to clarify. I knew I had let myself go too far beyond the limit of Cosmic Girl Scouting.

   As I knew this raging bull rerun of my lifal experience was about to be curtained, a calm outpouring of love emerged through me for me. I vowed to take charge of my journey, to heal the scars and discover the joy of my existence. The joy I was intended to savor and share.

   Though my body was barely able to see out of my swollen eyelids, I never saw Life more clearly. As I slowly acclimated myself back into the weightiness of my physical vehicle, I concluded: If I want to stop being a pawn in Les's game, I must make the first move.

   As the doctor examined my eyes, the doctor I often saw in this ER, the one who felt I was his regular customer, he fed me a dose of jolting reality: “One more of these stupid sessions and you won't even know what a Crayola is!”

   Not knowing who to call at that late hour to help me home, I heard I was to call Beth. Guess that on some level I wanted her to know what happened. To get her reaction. Possibly so she could see her son needed help, desperately.

   Guess I was still toying with a string, but this time not to personally help him, but to encourage the chance for him to be helped and healed. Guess part of me hoped she would take over this shit of fools and help rescue Les from Les, so that after me, no other lady might be booked on his Crazy Con Cruise.

   When Beth arrived, I must have appeared to be sleeping. Squinting through swollen yellow and purple lids, I saw her face lit by the dim hall lights, her rosy pink cheeks glistened with streaming tears. I faintly heard her mutter to herself: “My God, he's still doing this. How can he? I'll help you, Dearie. I'll get you to safety.”

   Wow! A major No-Doz moment! It never dawned on me that she knew the truth about Les. Nor that Les might have played his Gladiator Game with other women. Knowing I wasn't the only target somehow soothed my hurt of thinking I alone might have caused him to act as madly as he did. Or that I was totally responsible, other than as a catalyst.

   As she and the nurse helped redress my torn clothing over my bandaged body, Beth prepared to drive me back to our condo. I hoped there was a possibility that she and I would talk. Maybe I could find out where it all started. Maybe we could get him the psychiatric and spiritual help he needed.

   Maybe.

   Thus, I dreamed on.

   I didn't consider that Beth might be afraid of him, or that her ego might not want to admit her only son was not from the Beaver Cleaver mold.

   Arriving at the empty home after 3 a.m., she acted as if we simply returned from a shopping spree. I knew our talk would never happen by how stiffly she avoided my fuzzy eye contact. A reality rush must have chilled her heart, as she rapidly retreated into denial, making me again question:

    Why is blood thicker than water? What is so great about thick? What is it other than an in-house silent agreement to cover up madness, to keep dirt under familial carpets and avoid cleaning out the closets crammed with the denial of troubles. Closets locked by guilt-filled families... just as it is with the Blue Badgers who lie in fear of retaliation as a result of ratting on corrupted fellow officers.

   If indeed, thick is the slang for dense and stupid, possibly the blood that is spilled in the name of family denial needs a clarity transfusion. And more honesty regarding cover-ups that are encouraged by Tradition's interpretation of loyalty.

   Personally, it seems purer to be loyal to Truth and the Godian Family than to sink into the thick sludge of believing it's correct to maintain loyalty to biologically related abusers and unscrupulous associates. 'Tis a Thot.

   I felt relatively safe upon returning home as I was more aware of my spiritual protection after my Flight Into The Known, and I also knew Les' pattern. His next installment would be cloaked with words of regret, reeking with forgive me roses and teary avowals never to do it again. It was a predictable replay. Now, it was a boring rerun.

   I sluggishly scaled the stairs to the comfort of my studio where I grabbed my diary to log the communique I shared in my Flight Time, I wanted not to miss a word as I knew the fuel from those messages would be inspiring for many years to come.

   With this in mind, every word I heard poured through my hand like automatic dictation — which I'm sure it was. As I read what I wrote, a light lit within my heart via noticing the connection between what Maggie Irving told me a few years earlier and the essence of my in-flight program.

   After filling umpteen pages, and with a little help from some pain killers I was given in the ER, I fell into a deep sleep. But... Oh, damn! The first moment of dreamland had me sitting opposite Les in our dining room. Candles nervously fluttered as we clinked wine glasses to some toast.

   Then abruptly, a distant voice called out: “OK! That's a wrap! We're finished! Cast party's on Stage 3!”

   In that dreamscape, the walls of our home were split and relocated by stage hands. The ceiling became a blinding tangle of lights and dangling electric cords. The living room was now an open dark arena of cameras and crew. It felt so real, I said nothing. I just played along so I could catch up to this reel unreality.

   As we stood to leave, Les gave me a show-busy hug and said: “Hey, great workin' with ya, kid! See you on Stage 3!”

   I wandered off, somehow being guided to my dressing trailer. Looking in the mirror at my sandy hair, dyed to match his as a vivid symbol of me-loss, I pulled off my fake tresses, revealing the long dark hair I once had. I slipped out of the clothes he wanted me to wear before taking a very long steamy hot shower. I then enveloped my body in a fresh white T-shirt, Levi's and heels.

   When I entered Stage 3 for the cast party, it was crammed with all the people who affected my past — casually, intensely, lovingly or maliciously.

   Ashley (who played my mom) came forward to tell me how ticked off she was that her gig in this film was up years ago: “Damn that writer's plot! I had so many great ideas for my character development. But would they listen? NooOOoo!”

   Tanya came forward with her stage mom. She was totally unlike the image I felt she'd grow into. As I studied her head, smothered with Shirley Temple curls, she whined:

   “They told me I'd have a bigger part but I got knocked off in the early scenes. Oh well, if you ever do another life, keep me in mind.”

   She looked so different. When I asked her how old she was, she said “Ooooh, between 3 and 28. What age would you like me to be?”

   Yikes! Was she channeling my kidself?

   As I wove through the crowd, whirling with familiar faces, my arm was grabbed, spinning me around to hear Auntie Elsie's gravel voice.

   I asked her: “Are you somebody else now, too?”

   “Hell, no!”, she protested, “I'm always Elsa Maxwell! Always will be. Nobody else could do it. Great party, but it could have been wilder if they let me set it up! Oh, what the hell! The champagne's adequate. Hey, in case we don't meet again, remember what I told you. The more parties, the less wars. The more love, the less hate.”

   With that she gave me a long loving hug and waddled off into the crowd of fawning faces.

   On a giant platform, my days with the NBC Teen Workshop were being relived with the NBC orchestra playing some classic R&R, Bobby Vinton was conducting and Merv Griffin was emceeing, as they once did on the Saturday Prom Show we all apprenticed. Gregory and Maurice Hines suddenly sang and danced their way across the stage.

   This giggling revelry evoked all the sun-shiny moments of the USOs (Unexpected Spiritual Oases) I was lucky to have lived despite the war zones I battled through. In reflection, my past may not have been a breeze, but it never was bore!

   Suddenly a voice boomed to the right of me: “How sweet it is!” There stood Jackie Gleason, 100 proof “coffee” cup in hand. The awesome figure who adopted me as his Magic Marker for his poker games at the Colonial Bar & Grill on Broadway & 52nd Street after one of his Saturday shows.

   I flashed through that special saga that began when I was hired as a baby/kid hoofer for the June Taylor Dancers on the Jackie Gleason Show, and because literally God knows why, he became a fairy tale uncle to me. After one Christmas special, I was stranded outside the back stage door on a cold wooden crate waiting for Ashley to pick me up — maybe.

   As I sat alone, the snow glistened the surrounding city's greyness with silky whiteness, etching architectural silhouettes about the edges of old dirty buildings, a voice heralded above as if booming from a jolly archangel.

   “Whatcha doin' here, kid? Shouldn't you be home in bed? Where are your folks?”

   Those three simple questions were hard to easily answer. Still not being sure at that time as to why I was on Earth, let alone sitting on a backstage crate, and knowing my bed so often ranged from the incinerator room to back closets to bath tubs, I shot straight to the last question.

   “Well, you see, Mr. Gleason, my dad can't pick me up 'cause he died when I was a baby and I've got no idea what party my mom's forgetting time in.” I told him I was just okey-dokey. I could wait and if she doesn't show, I'll just take a cab home. I thanked him for asking and continued to hopelessly search the wintry street for Ashley.

   Thinking back, it must have been quite a moxy response spurting from a kid getting her banana curls flocked with the late evening snow. And recently having learned of his similar kidhood, I figure my story not only touched a chord, it played a symphony on his memory disc.

   After a long pause, he asked: “Y'hungry, kid?”

   With my stomach growling for me to answer honestly, he left word with someone inside the stage door in case Ashley showed. Instantly, I was doing a quick step march between my new bodyguards, Jackie Gleason and Jack Lescoulie, as we sped around to the Colonial Grill.

   As he ordered his usual dinner of double scotches, I was gifted with a steak dinner and a huge glass of milk.

   “Drink up, kid, it's good for ya!”

   Though I wanted to ask why he too wasn't drinking milk, and even though I hated the taste of it, I drank as advised, adoring the safe comfort I felt in his atmosphere.

   Mr. Gleason fascinated me from the moment of the first show I was hired to dance in with him because he never attended one single rehearsal that I noticed. The only time I saw his involvement was a few moments before air time when, dressed as the Poor Soul or whatever character he was inhabiting, he requested a script. Scanning the pages in a single bound like a cosmic super comic, he'd then tell some production man “Got it, let's go!”

   In time, through various conversations about our mutual belief in the validity of UFOs, other galaxies and such, I began taking my cosmic comment very much to heart.

   However, during that first dinner, sitting beside him and opposite Mr. Lescoulie, I gratefully savored the friendly companionship while I watched them dare each other with numbers off 50 and 100 dollar bills.

   “This is called Bullshit Poker, kid, but don't ever use that language in front of me, or anyone. I get to say it, you don't! Got it?”

   He pocketed a wad of bills from the game and gifted me with a fifty from his winnings saying I brought him luck.

   With no sign of Ashley coming to get me, I was escorted outside and put in a cab for home. As I hopped in, Mr. Gleason told me: “You're my good luck charm!”

   However, at this deja-you party, when he reminded me of those times, he bolstered my future by saying: “Now it's time to be your own good luck charm... okay, kid?”

   Hearing of a card game in a far off corner of this party, he slid into an “Away we goooo!” side step and disappeared. Disappeared only in that vision, but never in my memories of what a gentle generous heart he was. And what a nearly beyond mortal genius he was. A Renaissance sage fueled with double scotches and whimsy.

   Unexpectedly, a couple emerged from the clamorous crowd and hula-ed up to me. He in a Hawaiian shirt, she in a brilliant blue sarong. It was Paul and Linda McCartney.

   They reminded me of our meeting in Martinique and the portrait I painted of them. They both said it was now time to paint my own portrait, my life's portrait as I envisioned it.

   Then, they toasted with goblets of tea, hot for him and iced for her, or was it the other way around as they did on the island. Then they danced away into a popping party of news camera bulbs.

   Meanwhile, my shoulder was abruptly slapped with a Hey, kid! jolt. Turning, I did not see Mr. Gleason again, rather, Les with his arms draped with two glitzy compilations of all the hundreds of X-rated skin mags he prized and hid about our home. On the left was the chunkiest, tackiest hooker any film could conjure. On the right was a wasted teen centerfold from the child-porno books he favored for bathroom “reading”.

   His only comment was: “Hey, we sure kept the makeup men working over time! Well, I'm off to Texas, babe. My agent has this Cold Blood or something role he says I'm a natural for. See ya around!”

   Though I wasn't looking, Joe never showed. Possibly he was on another set filming a remake of “The Crucibles.”

   Feeling suffocated and desperate for fresh air, I left the party still not knowing the title of this movie. My sports car was parked outside. I jumped in and, as in a perfect happy ever after ending, drove off into the sunset feeling very free and anxious for a vacation. I was excited to learn what my next assignment would be, hoping it was a romantic comedy.

   As I drove through a beautiful hillside and turned a corner into a flowery glen, I woke up. It was so real I hoped my surrounding reality would be the dream.

   It wasn't. But, this reality suddenly had a brand new shiny perspective.

   Despite the fact it was still early morn, and I ached and stung from the bruises that medication was unable to dull, I began cleaning the house. This time, not from a fear-filled guilt, but for me!

   I sorted out the inventory I wanted for my future sojourn. Wanting to travel light into the Light of renewed Hope, I chose to collect only my art, writings, studio supplies, clothes and business records. Though I had meticulously decorated that 5 level place, when my liberty was on the line, I saw it as just stuff.

   The next evening, Les chose to call, this time bypassing the usual forgive-me-folly and shooting straight to the most arrogant chase by informing me of his desirability: “I'm at Chelsey's Bar. There's girls all over me! They can't leave me alone! They're lining up for me to screw 'em!”

   He told me to eat my heart out, but hung up before I could tell him I just put myself on a no-assault diet — no jawbreakers, clash-you nuts or whine punches.

   He didn't return for several days, gifting me with a needed think break. The spirit of indifference I was filled with for Les created a fantastic vantage of clarity.

   I realized I had avoided calling my union with Les quits because I didn't want to be socially labeled a “failure.”

   Though my career was sailing high, I felt I failed at my marriage by ignoring one basic truth:

    Marriage is a two person responsibility, and I was still acting as an abused kid by assuming all the guilt and liability for the chaos, by blinding myself to my affirmative options.

   I let my passion for caring comatose my sanity. And an abusing partner can be indescribably mesmerizing.

   As with people who watch races waiting for the inevitable high speed crash, living with an abusive mate is like waiting for a bomb to explode at any arbitrary movement. Living in the moment becomes a full time pre-occupation with current security as there's never any surety of who, or what, will crash the door of our emotional privacy.

   An abusing homelife is all-encompassing, like a deserted island. You remain by denying there are other places to explore. You fear booking an excursion as abusers have a hypnotic way of programming you to believe you will never be welcomed into another's heart zone, not even your own.

   It's easy for outsiders to vote abused mates as foolish for staying in absurd setups. Then again, I'm sure there are many soap opera viewers who have all the answers for their video pals if only they could talk through the TV.

   It's so easy to have the solution when you live outside the problem as a detached viewer.

   Yet, an abusive situation is just another type of Tunnel Vision. A troubled home life becomes so exhausting that you forget this is not how it has to be, not how it is everywhere, not how you were born to live, not what you deserve.

   So much energy is poured into making a decaying relationship work, that it's hard for the ego to admit:

   Hey! Yo! This ain't workin'!

   Tradition and many religious clubs blindly exalt the merit of hanging onto a marriage, no matter how contemptible and loathsome, as the ultimate proof of success.

   Tradition has centurially kept people imprisoned into false guilt, that they fear admitting they want out and that the union they helped to create is a dud in need of dumping.

   From one side of society's mouth we hear: “You gotta hang in to make it work. No pain no gain.” Yet! The other side of society babbles pious criticism regarding the stupidity of individuals who are battered by hanging on so as to obey that enigmatic Tradition.

   I wondered about that dueling diametric as I plotted my escape from my not-so-very-funny farm. I knew I'd carry the stigma of being twice divorced. Or, “A two time loser.” My answer: So what! Take that stamp and cancel it! Foe me I was a winner my not staying.

   I may have gone through a rough boot camp during my two marriages, but I felt I was stronger for having admitted that my nurturing passions had enlisted my service. And it was now time to resign, and retire my chaos crosses.

   Though Joe, fate and my self-doubts ousted me from the first one, which may account for the incomplete feeling I had, this time I chose to check me outta this pop stand by declaring me a quick study for: How Not To Be Married.

   I planned my escape from Les and felt hopefully famished about savoring the smorgasbord of my future. About the opportunities I would never be free to savor if I stayed and became a nameless body bag or leftover from a senseless marry-thon.

   In deciding to successfully leave, I knew I had to detach from my past aspirations. Les was not the man I dreamed he was. Not the marital destination my heart was navigating toward. Not the soul-fate I had long longed to re-up with for mutual service. And, definitely, not the co-captain on my dream cruise toward possible custody of Tanya.

   Recalling Maggie Irving's reading that Tanya and I were not fated to be together as her spiritual growth challenges were better served in a restricted atmosphere, caused me not to sing the cruise blues over this upset in my dream.

   Cutting my link to Les became one more confirmation that we can't make love happen. And when we struggle to force anything that's not in the cosmic cards, we end up beating our hearts against walls we're not meant to scale.

   I later thanked God that I didn't seek to regain custody of Tanya. Since my soul knows it was not meant to be, I realize it would have evolved into a hellacious, impoverishing battle.

   Les wouldn't support my Tanya Dream, my conscience would not have brought her into that chaos, and Fate was not going to budge, no matter how deeply my heart ached.

   If it ain't gonna be, it ain't gonna be. Just like with achers in unrequited love boats, no matter how hard they paddle unless the Spiritual Forces untie the ropes, they're never gonna sail the high seas of their misguided illusions.

   I think of those in loveless marriages with children and the confusion that occurs. A side of them knows they are floundering on a sinking ship with a lethal co-pilot, yet their other side believes they must stay onboard the bruise cruise for the sake of their kid passengers. All end up capsizing.

   It's better to live the finest life you can and let the kids participate, if they choose, if Fate allows, than to live in a living hell so as to give kids the heartless fabrication of a home, and the empty illusion of true love.

   As I cleaned up my act, I reviewed so many prior details.

   The time I hated my life with Les and desperately tried to commit suicide by swallowing a vial of birth control pills that I mistook for Valium. I couldn't stand any more pain.

   Looking back through my new reality. I saw that Les had not pushed me to attempt suicide. My illusions did.

   I realized how my Godian Life Savers were once again on duty by having me mistake birth control pills for Valium. How they must have tee-hee-hee-ed when no matter how I cuddled the pillows in the darkened closet (where else?), I couldn't even grab one wink of shut eye.

   I then recalled our last violent one-on-none. How Les sat on my chest, pinning my arms to the floor while replanting my two-lips and yelling: “I'll make you into who you should be! The world is hell and I'm gonna get you to see it like it is... like I see it! And you're going to regret to your dying day that you blew that chance to paint Rip Taylor's portrait and ruined my life!”

   I realized that Les and I, were both struggling in our own way to turn the other into who and what we thought we each ought to be.

   I was as wrong as was he.

   I allowed all that to happen by refusing to see how our spirits clashed, like oil and slaughter. And! As I had no right to make him happy, he had no right to make me unhappy.

   Bingo! The Freedom Key had turned, releasing me to see the ME I was born to be. It was time to turn in my Cosmic Girl Scout badge. The Brownie Points that turned to Black & Blue had no merit. They were tricks of the ego not worth collecting.

MEANING:

Though Cosmic Girl & Boy Scouts are a vast centurial troop, it's an endless bummer. A volunteer trip beyond Fiasco Frontiers. It's a club of well-meaning Scouts who feel their purpose in life is to drag others over to the sunny side of their street without a thought to the personal price. Nor a thought to whether others want to go or not.

   It includes all those who grab the burden of blame for whatever others choose to create, especially if those others are parents or mates or even kids who create abuse out of their personal fears and frustrations, and then share it with their family, their captured audience, or even those who innocently trespass onto their unmarked land-minds.

   The Cosmic Scouts are made of those who so desperately want the abusers in their life to be nice guys or gals, parents who really care down deep, terrific people beneath the garbage, or true saints who are just going through a bad phase, albeit, a long bad phase, that they sacrifice all sense of reality to maintain their self-delusions.

   The Scouts travel to the outermost reaches of denial to justify their abusers' actions, whether it means making themselves wrong or deserving of abuse, or even strong enough to sacrifice self if that's what seems necessary to hang onto an abusive relationship — or a self-abusing attitude.

   I finally understood WHY the only life any of us can live is our own. WHY the only merit badges of happiness and success we are eligible to earn are those that our attitude has worked to warrant.

   Though Ashley, Joe and Les represented a Trilogy of Torment, I bet they all felt they were absolutely right in their chosen attitudes and actions.

   Possibly, that's why I hold no anger for those of my past. It's pointless. What would it change, other than change me into a revengeful, tear-swollen woman?

   I'm telling you this to illustrate the long lasting affects of abuse when we delay seeing people as-is so as to Let Go of them and our contorted pictures of how we want to see them. Who we want them to be.

   I realized I had played the same self-delusion game with Les, Joe and Ashley. The players changed but the stimulus was the same. So too, I believed my sense of worth was contingent upon my success in elating another's attitude.

   Wrong!

   Wrong, because there are many people who delight in despair, who savor their whines and cheesed-off passions, and who get high on their self-designed downers.

   So! Who am I to say everyone wants to be joyous? Wants to be a happy camper? Or even that my definition of joyous is shared by another? Life is an individual choice. We are only given one vote — one for ourself.

   As it became clear that I reached another impassable stalemate, I heard myself tell myself: OK! Honey, this gig ain't worth anymore down time in your life span, nor worth the puffs beneath your eyes. So, away you go! Curtain down! Lights out! It's exit time! You're not here to be singin' in the pain, you're here to be happy again!

   Ergo! My new challenges were multi-leveled:

   To never fear what others think of me as long as I'm true to my heart and conscience, and am on a path that does not hurt others nor allows others to hurt me.

   To never buy into another's attitude, nor expect another to buy into mine.

   To recognize that continual stress is a probable signal to push my eject button, exit the poop prison and skyrocket toward the highs of loving liberty.

   My renewed focus was to become my own mortal Godian Gatekeeper. Navigating a delicious passage that would guide my heart toward the “Isle of You”.

   The I Love You, God, the I love you, Krystiahn, and the I'll Love YOU - only if you are open to loving.

   The Isle of You was to be my new self-Treasure Island.

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn