Recovery

So I am back again doing work, work that it seems I have been doing all my life. I went to my first shrink at 18, when nightmares made it difficult for me to sleep or to live or to enjoy life with my first husband. I have done psychological work, spiritual work, all the myriad things, rebirthing, meditation... I suffer from post-traumatic stress, some of it from early childhood, exile, abuse, and later discrimination while in a foreign country. I had an accident several years ago that left me mentally unable to drive, and this is coming back. In December when I went to visit my daughter I had terrible attacks of terror; there was a storm, and I kept screaming and crying and wanting to have the car stop... I would have never gotten there had it not been for my love...

But I, as a wounded being who revisits these things, am co-dependent, and probably that is not an easy thing for children and other strangers to put up with. Recently, I was summarily dismissed, given up. I was a stranger, and the pain and the anger, because oh there is a tremendous amount of anger, is making it difficult for me to go on. I have trouble sleeping. I want to shout, yet again, THIS IS NOT FAIR, so instead, I have gone back into therapy, and she has suggested group recovery, such as ACOA or AL-ANON, or even CODA. I will get to stand up and say, I am a co-dependent. It turns out so many of us who are activists are equally wounded, and the most interesting thing is the guilt from being white, which my partner experiences, which makes us work that much harder. I know how much privilege there was in my life, despite all the abuse, because there was access to education and culture, and because, after all, I am white, even if in this new land I am a person of color (which I treasure). My sister, also a victim, is helped by medication; I can't seem to do that. May she thrive, and heal, and find love and peace.

Sisters

We talked
through deepening gloom and chill
of children, wounds, organic freerange
chickens, the reparation
of abuse, and whether evil
ever has a mother's face
and winter rooms with socks and layered
clothing to avoid
electric dollars flying out of windows,
and squeezing contributions
from ex-husbands for the fruits
of former love, their lives not ones
of desperation but of newfound
wealth, and frequent trips
to disneylands and cruises
with the current wife or mistress,
but on through midnight, one and two
o'clock, through change to daylight
savings we held inner hands,
asked why, laughed, ate
that evening's apple pancake
and buttered pumpernickel bread,
and paraphrased that old saw that revenge
is best served cold, and rearranged
the early and the later griefs
of motherjealousy and hatred
and asked why, and had no answers
and asked why, and wondered how to keep
depression far and leashed, asked why
and all the pseudo philosophical
and new age metaphysical and all the theories
of FreudJungMaltz and People of the Lie
left questions in their wake, there is a fact
that we are sisters orphaned by a mother's
hatred or indifference, that love and sometimes
jealousy bind us like old Mandarin feet,
and that despite the bickering and the halting
progress of our ordinary goodness we must
persist.