CHAPTER 34

When Mourning Has Broken

   I thank God for my survival instincts as they served me well after Les. My energies were no longer scattered nor drained from pacifying him; avoiding his temper buttons that I might accidentally push; staying out of his war path; re-enforcing my crystaleen force field that I energize to protect myself from his discouraging slurs; playing hide-out mouse to his tyrannical cat; boosting my sense of self while cringing under his hellstorm of insults, oblique to blatant; seeming the primo public klutz to invent excuses for my tear swollen eyes or obvious bruises; or, maneuvering to finish creative projects while ducking his Flying Wolenda daggers.

   Once I cleared my slate of all these time wasters, I was amazed at the wondrous free time I had to focus, not only on my career success, but on my soular happiness.

   Yeah! I'm sure Les would have called me selfish. But, what the hey? I gave 100% of myself to serve his needs for years, so I figured that considering the interest rate on the strain and eye stretching that might need future surgery to repair, I had earned enough Happy Points to be “selfish” for at least a decade. Or more!

   Then again, we all have our definition of selfish. I finally defined it as: Being nice to me without hurting others, and Looking Out For #1 without doing a number on others.

   True, the escape I planned got me out, but with the stress of that biggie, I hadn't looked further down the load. I'm glad, as I might have planned with false fear. Once free, my wispy fright swiveled into jazzed expectations.

   Though I stayed for a few days with a girl friend, I soon wanted my own haven — size be damned. True, Les and I shared a multi-level condo that was gorgeous, for which I paid the rent.

   Yet, I realized I chose it, decorated it and paid more than my share with real and emotional currency. Ergo! I could do it again. So what if I started with a one-roomer? I could only expand from there.

   Besides, a one-roomer I held the key to my haven to savor sweet aloneness and it sure beat a shared mansion carpeted with egg shells and lined with loneliness.

   My new goal became: one week to get a studio/home, a car, a place for all my paintings and refreshening my career. Hey! No problemo! I lived for so long in a pressure cooker, I decided to let that intensity work for my betterment, not against it.

   Letting my GUT Buddy be my guide, when a friend suggested I hang all my framed art in the lounge of a ritzy new squash club in exchange for a year's membership, I went for it. The club was below ground in a beautiful midtown high-rise. I took it as a sign to apply for an apartment upstairs in the world.

   While they reviewed my application, and knowing that the balance from the CBC job would not be in for a month or so, I took a quantity of posters I created for The Bay City Rollers and, miraculously, sold them to a major chain, thanks to the sotre buyer’s 12 year old daughter hugging my legs & crying: “BUY THEN, DADDY!”

   Armed with that money, I raced to the bank to cover my assets. Ergo! My new apartment was immediately approved. Yahoo!

   Word was instantly out on the commercial streets, and calls were being forwarded to the club for assignments that were waiting for me as soon as I was settled. Double Yahoo!

   While celebrating my 3-day coupe, the club's manager said his friend needed someone to assume his low payments on a new black Monte Carlo. I grabbed the sign and signed the paper. Thus beating my one week deadline. Triple Yahoo!

   I moved immediately from my girlfriend's and in one day furnished my new one-roomer with my art stuff, a box spring and mattress, a flood of plants and mucho discount store imagination. Hey! A private concrete 18th story tree house!

   On my first night, I threw myself a solo celebration to a Freedom Party, backed by a great jazz tape with no mushy heart guilting vocals. And bought the best champagne to roast my past and toast my future.

   As I sat at my drafting table facing Toronto's skyline, the window glass overlapped my own image upon the sparkling city lights, emulating my on-top-of-the-world feeling.

   I took this space-in-time to review my recent passage through Blunderland with The Mad Chatter. The farther I distanced myself from Les, the wedding picture he and I created from dueling visions clarified for a calm inspection.

   Yes. I knew I asked for it.

   Ergo! My first question was: How?

   Second question was: How NOT to ask for it again?

   As I traveled back to overview our initial meeting, I realized my openness was prompted by his “Tell me all about you, your past, your feelings, your hurts, successes, dreams... everything!” His attentiveness was a truth opiate.

   This, combined with the seeming comfort and lovable air, became a sticky spider web. The subtle snare was obvious when the “everything” I felt safe enough to share, soon became the arsenal he used against me for later control.

   As a clever warrior does before battle, Les had briefed himself on all my vulnerabilities, plus how and when I could be most effectively detonated. My honesty, from which he built his arsenal, became his steady accomplice.

   Though, inwardly, I was aware he was seeking to deny my feelings and silence my desires. His mounting assaults began freezing my freedom to express. In time, I dared not offer any objections or requests in our shared life for fear of his rage. His temper threats were expertly discharged as I had told him my dream life was one of calm homey harmony.

   I once said I'd do anything to have a complete home life.

   I did not foresee the toll my goal might cost, including stomaching his bratish fits, cruel verdicts on my worth that prompted me to cover for, or ignore, his public explosions.

   I saw how cleverly he used my loathing for marital duels and my loathing for couples insulting each other as a public road show of inner hatred. By knowing my morality mode, he gained the strength to use my politeness as permission to take any pot shot he felt like slinging when we were out with others. He knew I wouldn't serve back with sharper insults.

   I felt trapped. While I didn't want to respond or become what I did not like in other couples, I couldn't figure how to get him to terminate his public humiliations.

   I became an ace at the good ol' Traditional Tough It Out Tactic. The more I dwelled on the sweetness of our initial meeting, the worse things got. The more I envisioned his across-the-crowded-room-look, the nastier his face grew.

   Boy! Did I live past-backwards.

   I lied to myself by thinking he really didn't mean to be so explosive, he just couldn't help himself. After all, his dad degraded his mom, his mom gave in to keep the peace. Ergo! He must think his attitude is OK. And that's how married people act. So, if I just give him enough time and lots of loving space, he'll feel secure, adopt a compassionate heart, recognize how much he's hurting me and stop it.

   Wrong!

   By withdrawing my desires and submitting to his, I had sanctioned his right to terrorize me. I became his silent partner by not allowing him to be responsible for his actions.

   He must have felt incredibly secure knowing I was too polite to ever criticize him in public.

   Being well mannered caused me to be well hammered.

   All through it, I honestly thought I was being strong by not sinking to his level. I felt love had to triumph. Yet, by continuing to let him make me wrong, I lashed muzzles over my feelings and ability to express myself. Though I never gave up, I did give in.

   Sexually, life became a predictable Pavlovian Probe:

   I would express my needs and desires to seek solutions so we could both be satisfied.

   He would then drag out his arsenal of how the problems were all my fault — never his. He'd aim the most intimate secrets I shared when he thought it was OK to do so. Then, he'd use me to support his resistance to get involved with my “problem”.

   The pattern became a predictable yoyo. No matter how often I rehearsed new approaches to find the smoothest entry into his heart, every attempt went full circle and forced me back into greater retreats of guilt for having personal desires, let alone for expressing them.

   Knowing the inevitable outcome, that he would kill any discussion and make me totally responsible for whatever soured in our blendship, I ceased mentioning the topic of sex, love, and romance.

   My treating him as a sad and tortured man who fought to avoid mature subjects like sexuality and female desires was a boomerang courtesy. By playing a patient buddy to a 30 year old brat, I couldn't have spoiled a kid as much as I spoiled him by letting him get away with mental murder.

   Ladylike silence may seem to be refined dignity. For me, it created a prison, a solitary cell of muted thoughts.

   I was very aware of his villainous need to control and overpower me, his desperate desire to be right, to be king of his castle. Yet, for the good of my Heart Mission I tried to find logic in chaos by hovering above the muck.

   But! Since this chaos was my life, there was a limit to how long I could hover without crashing; to how long I could be made to feel wrong; to how long I could be told I was “the problem”, before I caved in and accepted the corrupted programming of my worth. His disregard for my feelings and dreams became my disregard for my right to love and live.

   He was hell-bent on retroactively punishing me with my past and by pushing the right buttons that stifled me from getting help for fear I would hear: “It's what you deserve for being bad.” I allowed him to become my living nightmare.

   The natural desire to protect myself was shoved down so deeply into my fear zone, it caused mega-watt implosions and worth breakdowns. Fearing a show of my stress would escalate his wrath I concealed it… which only fed more stress.

   I knew if he knew how much he was succeeding at hurting me, he'd grab it as extended permission to add more ammo to his arsenal. It was an exhausting and deathly cycle. I told myself it was OK… he won't discuss our intimate relationship. Maybe it's not his fault, after all, his folks never seemed to relate, romantically or otherwise. I'll just give him more time. More time. He'll be OK... soon.

   Wrong! The more time I gave him, the more confident and resolute he became in his attitude.

   In retrospect, I remembered we first met when I was on a personal joyous high for simply being me which caused me to feel totally in love with life. I forgot that I created all the loving elements in myself and my world that made me feel so terrific. Forgetting caused me to do a credit shuffle. I felt my joy was his doing! That HE was terrific. Thus, I served him the fiber with which he wove his web.

   The initial sweep-off-the-tootsies 3-D Romance of Dining, Dancing and Dream sharing did a 180 once we moved in together. The 3-D's transformed into Discrediting, Deriding and Depreciating. He served. I received.

   What seemed to be heartfelt romancing, I was soon told, was just the usual male rite to get a woman, not necessary once you got her. “Why dance if you've got the dame?”… he so often said.

   My passion for dancing, once called “delightful”, was now a “drag”. My candlelit dinners, once described as “loving and delicious thoughtful gifts to us” were now “too damn dark to see the food” and replaced by trays and the constant TV glow. My surprise love cards once “a thrill to open and keep” were now a “nuisance” to be discarded.

   In fact everything that was once “delightful” became a possible detonation for his combustion fuse.

   The intimate hurt of past molestation as a child that he once encouraged me to share, now supplied his most potent arsenal. My heart wrenching disclosure initially invoked a soothing response of “Oh, must've been rough, hon. I'm proud of how you dealt with it. I'll always be here for you — you can tell me anything.”

   Oh, yeah?

   After we moved in together, whenever I spoke with him of us both needing to bring the romance into our life, of dumping the intimidation, fear and anxiety carpeting our home, I came to predict his chilling silencer of:

   “What do you know? You're all fucked up from your kidhood! What can you possibly know about sex? Or romance? Or anything worth listening to?”

   Not curiously, there were endless clues that he radiated when he described his past string of girl friends. Clues that directly related to our current problems. Yet, I chose not to consider them as he vividly appealed to my ego by saying: I was like no other woman. I was special. (Hah!)

   I heard how one woman left him as she wanted to move out, live separately and just date him. He called her stupid for wanting to go backward, not forward, in their relationship. I didn't consider the obvious: He might be the kind of guy who flips his face after getting a live-in commitment.

   Wanting to see only the best, I sided with him. Here was this sweetie who wanted a one-on-one pledge and there was she, the hussy, wanting to go back to one night clings.

   With Cosmic Girl Scout salute held high, I pledged to make everything work out perfectly for him this time. And, I wouldn't walk out, no matter what.

   He told me of another woman who ran off for romantic flings while they lived together. He spoke of being shocked, how he couldn't believe she didn't accept the serious side of personal commitment. He spoke of how “for no reason!” she upped and left him and went off with this “Romeo.”

   Ergo! To make him right and make my dream of him right, I made those other women wrong. They were villains! I stuffed my ears with denial cotton that blocked the obvious signals.

   How could I investigate? I was too busy rescuing.

   The longer we stayed together the greater the pressure cooker bubbled with turmoil. The heat intensified whenever he attacked me with my past. I killed my daring to defend any slur he fed me, or use his past as ammo. His violence placed his past off limits. His arbitrary tantrums forced me to swallow any remark of how his past discord may possibly resemble what we were enduring.

   To keep the peace, I kept him seeming right (to him) by making me seem wrong. Challenge? How long would I play this game before I bought the charade as reality?

   In time I realized we were partners on the same team: HIS. And both worked to slaughter the same enemy: ME.

   To anesthetize the heart cramps that went with the territory of sustaining this Kamikaze Kinship, I promoted myself from Cosmic Girl Scout to Fairy Gold Mother, saying:

   Hey! I'll do the Midas Love Touch! Dreams will come true. With your devotion, support of his career, listening to his stories of defeats and how others had done him wrong, assuaging his setbacks, lauding every accomplishment, ONE DAY! You'll fill him with sooo much love that all his anger will have no more room to thrive nor whiplash nor hurt you.

   Wrong!

   I never drained him of hostility nor arrogance, Rather, I nurtured it to greater heights by supporting his Game Plan.

   I recalled the very first glimpse of explosiveness that was the tip of his volcano. Shortly after we moved in together he carted numerous boxes over to my apartment. With a wink he told me not to look at them, yet he left the tops open. Spinning with the romantic dizzies, I thought:

   Hey! Is this a surprise he wants me to discover? Why else would he put them in the hall with flapping lids and leave for the day knowing I was reorganizing the apartment?

   The first box was indeed a surprise package. It was jammed with triple X-Rated high priced porno mags. Wanting to be liberal and cancel a shock-barf, I told myself that all guys use girlie mags to get turned on. Ergo! These being such rough trade rags he must be a powerfully sexual guy.

   Huh!

   So, what's one box?, I thought — until I learned the other boxes held cruder porno, including vulgar photos exploiting little girls and boys. This presented quite a postgraduate test for my covering, excusing and rationalizing.

   Unfortunately I passed.

   I used the hours before he came home to deny my reactions and turn me back into a cool liberated posture. This paved the stage for him to break into a torrent upon his return home.

   He not only yelled at me for moving and looking in his open boxes, he rewrote history by saying he hadn't left them in the hall and they were all sealed. Funny. He didn't look like Charles Boyer in Gaslight.

   He then rotated the record by saying I had a filthy mind for thinking his books were obscene. I found that odd as he hadn't given me the chance to speak my opinion.

   Rather than get mad or admit I made a mistake in my boyfriend choice, I added to his assault by apologizing for my touching his stuff. Though this was the first of hundreds of setups I tripped into, I vowed to do better. To work hard and never rile him again. It was a masochistic nutso game.

   When his tantrums paralyzed my senses I lied to myself that they were a result of his financial problems, his inability to handle money, or never make enough to cover his need to overspend. I conned myself into believing he'd be fine once he was as rich as he desired to be. I swore to escalate my work schedule so as to quicken my peace dream and make him rich.

   TROUBLE WAS: My promise to make nice and keep the peace was impossible to keep, as ANYTHING ticked him off, giving him the arbitrary excuse to explode and humiliate.

   Life was a land mine without a detector.

   My desire to make him happy became a toxic opiate I fed into my system causing my addiction to self-denial. His mood shifts kept me constantly off balance. Without warning, he'd devastate my whole beingness. The next day he'd bring me roses and tell me how much he loved me.

   Only once did I dare ask what love meant to him. It was not a pretty sight. Though I repeatedly rehearsed how to ask, yet not push wrong buttons, it was a hopeless task. As might any pro player do, he astutely reversed it, telling me his answering was pointless. Since I had no concept of love, there'd be no way I could understand his reply.

   Admittedly, while I was coming to loathe him, I was still fascinated with his imaginative attacks and use of weaponry.

   Often asking myself: If everything holds so much hope of a happy-ending, why do I tense up when company calls? Why do I freeze at the simple question of: How are you?

   Why does my stomach turn when I see how charmingly he acts with others — especially women? When he portrays the loving all-doing husband for them? Why do I feel like barfing when he assails and rips apart my thoughts in front of others with unbroken lectures, pushing me to the point of wanting to walk, yet I never do?

   I never listened to the answers ringing loud and clear. I refused to pick them up as I sensed they wouldn't fit in with what I wanted to believe.

   He kept me addicted to my dream through his fine tuned instinct for knowing when he pushed me to my limit. When I was ready to get the hell outta there.

   To keep the game going, he'd tearfully gush through the door with flowers laced with heart touching apologies and kneeling with fauteary sentiments of how wonderful I was to give so much of myself to making “us work.” Even putting up with his “little outbursts.” And, how no other woman on Earth could be as loving, dedicated and strong as I was. And how he vowed to make everything great for us.

   His scenes gave flowers-from-a-fellow a bad smell. I so longed to know what it might feel like to get flowers from a guy just because — instead of a guy's guilt-greasing.

   Whenever this scene played, my GUT Buddy yelled:

Watch for Incoming UFOs:

Ulterior Ferocious Objectionables!

   By Les playing on my dream, I fell for it every time. And, like clockwork, soon as I emotionally unpacked my baggage the 180 would turn — like gnats stinging my self-worth.

   In time the echo shuffle began by his serving me back thoughts I once served him, but as his own. When I met him he was not one to express any philosophical or spiritual ideas. Then suddenly he began serving me my own theories, but distorted them to work in his favor.

   I once questioned the karmic aspect of abusers only to hear him say “You're screwing up your karma by being such a lousy wife!” It was like a weird de ja who?

   There were constant rewrites of incidents occurring only a few moments prior that he'd deny or rewrite depending on how he wanted to turn them in his favor. Though I often felt like carrying a tape recorder at all times, it was pointless. I'd only be accused of Watergate-ing.

   No matter what I dared say was lacking in our life, or my life, he echoed that it was what he lacked, and that “fucked up” me was causing all the problems. Never him.

   In a way I was the biggest problem. Not for him, but for me. I was flipping out by never knowing what to expect.

   Toward the end, as I asked myself: Does he love me? My inner answer was: “Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody really care?”

   Our marriage had become a raving tennis match wherein he was both players and I felt like a worn out ball. I feared mentioning my feelings as I knew I'd hear: “You think YOU have it rough, what about ME!”

Translation:

YOU, and YOU ALONE, are to blame!

   I felt like a stupid fish in a tank with a teasing fisherman. He'd lure me in with a promise of love and kinship, hook me and then threaten me by hanging me over a sizzling fry pan, then laugh at it being fun! “Can't YOU take a joke?”

   He'd then gently slip me back in the tank saying life will be great from now on. I'd sappily splash around, thinking the fisherman was a nice friend — also the only one I had.

   Then, WHAMO!, the lure drops. “C'mon, just sit on the bait! I'll bring you up to play” Then triple WHAMO! Back over the fry pan! Fear! Near death. Then, “Hey, it's only a joke! Let's be buddies.” I was repeatedly suckered.

   I was beginning to believe all the problems were my fault as all I ever heard was: “If you would just straighten out, everything would be great!”

Translation:

Give me sex when I want it and cut the bull about your romance bit. Shut up, keep the place clean, get my meals on time no matter what your work program is, make  lot of money for this lavish life style and in exchange, I'll make a fool out of you whenever and wherever I want.

   When I once asked him if he honestly felt his demands were meant to create a fair and just marriage — before I knew the depth of his parents' indifference toward each other, he replied: “What do you know about being happily married? You had no parents!”

   By hitting me where I was most vulnerable he pulled his greatest silencer to learning more about his background. He kept alive his family portrayal as both perfect and distant.

   Though he said he loved his parents, he once let slip that he never trusted his mom nor felt his dad ever respected him. Only once did I bring this dichotomy up. He snapped a subject change with: “What's it to YOU? How could YOU understand a REAL family?”

   As always, it shot back to Square Me.

   Until the end, in my last pitch effort to protect my dream, I looked for how awful I must be. A verdict he supported by reminding me I was never loved as a kid. Adding, I would never be better loved than he was struggling to do.

   I bought it as I felt I must be a horrid failure of a woman and wife to have turned this once charmer into the house devil he'd become. Finally one thing we agreed on. We both blamed me for our disastrous marriage.

   The Wanting Me With Him All The Time Bit thoroughly confused me. On one hand all my girl friends were judged by him as gossiping bitches, not one worthy of my company, but him. Yet, when at home, all he did was watch TV and ignore me 'til after midnight when our talkless evening had bored me to sleep.

   Then, when the lights were off, he'd want instant sex. If I pulled back or felt like: What the hell is going on? Can't there be a bit more romance than slam bam, thank you m’am?, he'd explode for me being “a thoughtless bitch.”

   On other nights when he knew I'd be home cooking a great dinner for the two of us, candlelight and the works, he'd call about 20 or 30 minutes after I expected him, to say he was staying out with the boys or the girls at the bar. I learned not to complain, or I'd hear I was being selfish — AGAIN!

   True, he'd tell me to call one of my “flighty girl friends” and go out and do something. But, he also knew it was too late to call what few friends I had left. And, he knew I had to fridge the cooked dinner so he could complain the next night of having to eat leftovers. There was no way to win.

   I even tried the second honeymoon bit, many times. I thought if we got away from our usual routine, my surprise gift of a trip for 2 to Nassau would be a turn around for us. Wrong!

   Sometimes the complaints and insults would start as the plane took off, sometimes he'd wait 'til our first dinner on the island and escalate from there. One souvenir I always brought home was tear swollen eyes wrapped in sunglasses and the ringing echo that “as usual” I spoiled his good time.

   Equally predictable was when these blowups pushed me to the point of yelling “I've HAD IT! I'm LEAVING!”, he'd pour out the sweetness and lovey huggy-goos. Or regretful tears for having been so rough. This approach always ended with vows to change and make things better.

   I never asked how could he know what better was since I'd never been able to express what I felt was wrong.

   It was amazing how much absurdity was so blatantly obvious, how thickly the clues were cast, yet I ignored them due to my Make-Nice Quest.

   Even with my artwork, though I sustained it commercially (God literally knows how!) my need to privately express was lessened. I recall a series of personal paintings I visualized and stupidly shared with him only to hear: “If you aren't getting guaranteed money, why bother?”

   I defied him and began to paint the series, enjoying every minute, then hiding them in the closet (where else). And, as it turned out there was no immediate market as I then had no clout in the fine arts field.

   Though inwardly I felt great, that lack of instant financial feedback seemed to validate his discount of my pleasure and continual toss of smug discouragement darts. Though within, I claimed he didn't affect me, I didn't paint for my personal enjoyment for over a year.

   How ironic! All those flashbacks ending with the lack of my passion to paint occurred as I sat in my new safe house, at my art table topped with jars of sable brushes, paints and a new water color block of paper tempting to be tapped.

   A happy beginning to a sappy ending.

   My reflection lasted 'til the sun spread its glow over the city, taking its guard position as the neon city lights blinked off duty. My time of mourning was over by morning!

   Though I didn't then know how I could absolutely avoid another Mad Match, I felt relieved because I began another pun-streak as a thought flowed through my painless noggin:

   Hey! My Excedrine bills would no longer be a headache!

   During that dawning, I realized I was no longer antsy because I was no longer avoiding the answers to my lifal questions. Answers to: Why did I keep myself in that loony locale; How could I walk sans fear, regret or any attached nooses of If Only-ing and What Might Have Been-ing.

   I was free because I Looked, Learned and Let Go of my illusion of Les and my absurd fantasy of our Togetherness Destination.

   I was free of What If-ing when I took fair responsibility for my having emotionally financed our Docu-Farce.

   I rescued my ego before I fell into the trap of blaming Les for all the mess and for my starring in the Blame Game.

   I freed myself of years of emotional imprisonment via skipping the stress of thinking I had to make him pay in court for our foul plays in order for me to win my freedom.

   Hah! What a waste of time and energy that would have been, but what a popular doubles' match. One that usually ends with: Love Nothing vs Lawyers Having Every Last $$$.

   If I played that Loser's Match, I'd have made my Liberty's Right Flight contingent on a capricious justice system voting that Les was wrong. Poppycock!

   So, while sipping the last drop of bubbly and savoring the last note of the repeating jazz tape, I knew for sure that Captain Fate, The Cosmic Wait Watcher, was not about to overcharge me for flying to the future with excess freight!

   Yahooooo! And a very Good Morning to you, Lady Life!

BLT: Bottom Line Truth:

Les wanted me to accept and live his version of reality. We split as I could not continue to perform in his show.

   So too, I wanted him to accept and live my version of our possible happy reality, but he wouldn't play the masquerade.

   Staying together would have been a Lose/Lose Hell-a-cast.  No matter how either of us would choose to evolve from that Halloween Eve, splitting from the charade was, for me, the only optimistic opportunity for grasping the Win-Win Brass Ring of Hope.  It was the only honorable way to fly.

   During those last fate-filled night before I fled… as I hid, once again in my closet, I thought of what was keeping my soul alive.

   Indeed, most of all, I knew it was God… then my most encouraging creative friends who believed in me… without strings of wanting anything from me other than my happiness.

   I was blessed with many Earthian creative angels then.

   Professionally, the most prominent angel was Gerry LaCoursier, then President of A&M Records Canada (later CEO of Polygram). Gerry believed in my talent, honesty & genuineness from the get-go. Shortly after we met, he commissioned me to create with A&M on their Lorence Hud project. 

   The Hud project was lots of fun & very successful and won A&M great national notice.  More importantly, Gerry’s belief  in me imprinted a deep resonance in my soul that I mattered. That I was worthy of being appreciated and compensated. I really really mattered… especially hearing such words of praise from a man who was so honoured for integrity and talent by so many.  Ergo! I must be pretty terrific!

   I sure never heard that in my home.

   As I huddled in my closet the night before I fled when I was so very afraid of notice from Les & his abuse, memories of Gerry’s praise caused me to never forget my worth as an artist and a woman.

   Just shows you… often the briefest compliment we sincerely give another can make a lasting impact on their life and survival.

   Perchance that is why I examine every word I offer another.  I want to inspire… not dispire.

   Though he never knew it, Gerry saved my life that night. I made it through …and I am now alive to write this. He may never know what he caused within me by believing in me… but I do.

   Chose words carefully… people pack them in their emotional luggage… be it praise-worthy or negative.  Best to be in the happy hampers of another’s life.

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn