Tag Archives: harm

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Unweighted

Words behind my back
damaging
hurtful
gossip and lies
I forgive
I wait

I wait

I wait, wait, weight

Weighted 13 years
For them to speak to me
Instead of about me
At last waiting makes me angry
I have forgiven
tried to connect
some of them say they love me
this is not love
waiting
weight of hurt and anger

And I let go
of the wait
of the weight

I forgive myself
I am free
I rise
I let them go
they are forgiven
but they may not enter my life
again
not ever

I forgive myself
I am free
I rise

unweighted

________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompts: weight and chopper. My heart is what is chopped, and the abandoning friends and family wielded the choppers.

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Daily Evil: Q is for Quiet

When is it evil to be quiet? When you are witnessing bullying or injustice or someone being harmed. Have you witnessed bullying and stood by and does it bother you?

I am at a dinner, invited. It turns out that the agenda is to talk a partner into staying, because she has quit. Partner one wants partner two to stay. Partner three and I are horrified and don’t want her to stay, but we do not want to say that to her. We frankly can’t wait for her to leave.

The dinner turns in to partner one and two bullying partner three. I am the newest and don’t know what to do. The next day I am ashamed and think, why didn’t I take partner three and leave? What is the matter with me?

Part of it is that I revert to childhood. I survived a complex household with people who were loving sometimes and horrid and drunk at others. Clamming up and being quiet was how I survived. But I am an adult now and I can leave. I can also speak up and say, “Stop. This is not fair. This is an ambush.”

Today’s watercolor is flowers. My mother loved flowers, had a wild and delightful garden, and painted them often. This is a small watercolor, 7 by 10 inches, no date.

I am thinking about the latest shootings. Aren’t we supposed to welcome strangers, for they may be angels in disguise? What did you stock up on during the pandemic? A gun didn’t occur to me. I bought more water filters and wished I could buy for the whole county. I bought seeds. I bought rice and beans. You can’t eat bullets and they aren’t good toilet paper either. I studied local edible plants. What did you buy? So many people are so afraid.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: nothing. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

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Yard Art

There is a fabulous garden in Portland, Oregon decorated with bowling balls.

i have decided to decorate with oxygen tanks.

if anyone has any oxygen paraphernalia, I want it, please.

This art installation is titled “Tethered”. Or possibly “Chained.”

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loyal

For the Daily Prompt: loyal.

I am thinking of the men working with the Weinstiens and the Cosbys. They might have heard a rumor, but they ignored it? Women are free to speak up if there is a problem?

No, gentlemen, actually women are only “free” to speak up if they are rich and in massive groups.

Otherwise, we are dismissed, silenced, disbelieved and ignored.

For me, it was at age 7. Are you going to say I was dressed wrong? I was too sexy? I should not have been alone with him? It’s my fault?

The water is beautiful and reflects the sky. What do you think is there beneath the surface in the depths?

 

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the tide going out

I am thinking about the term “white trash” and choices.

Is “white trash” a discriminatory term? A derogatory term? Is it a type of person or is it a “lifestyle choice”? Or is it a sum of choices?

A friend tells me that it is not discriminatory. Not an insult. A lifestyle. Then the friend says, “Some people would assume that I am white trash because I live in a trailer (manufactured home) and don’t own my own land. I rent.”

Would this person be white trash to you? Does it make a difference if they are male or female? Over 60? Under 30? Single? Have children? Would you feel differently about a single male parent than a single female parent? Would you feel differently if they are widowed instead of divorced?

And at what age do we become responsible?

If I am a child growing up in a household with alcoholism, verbal abuse, parents with mental health issues or grave illness or abandonment, where is the line where I become responsible for myself?

I surveyed my smokers for years, what age did you start? The men mostly said age 9. There was more cultural pressure on women, but the youngest started at 11 or 12. And then the horrific stories, where the parent is offering whiskey to a child under 10. My sister and I wandered around peoples’ houses in the dark when we were under ten. She was three years younger. I was a kid who did not trust adults and was careful. Scared. So we did not get into drugs or alcohol and I hated my father’s unfiltered camels. My parents would not touch illegal drugs, thankfully. I took care of my sister, but we were entirely unsupervised in barns and houses and outside….

I think that our teens are making choices at far younger ages than parents want to admit. I see parents check out when the child is fourteen or even younger. Teens who are nearly living at friends. Teens who already seem lost. And sometimes the parent is wrapped up in a divorce or a parent is sick or dying or a parent is in jail or abandons the family.

What age did you make choices? Did you make good ones? And is white trash hate speech? If you made bad choices, were you able to change later on?

What is the line between free speech and hate speech? And what is the line between love and enabling?

I am still searching….


Over the Rhine: Fool and Let it fall

For the Daily Prompt: rhyme. No, it doesn’t rhyme. But I am thinking of the phrase: no rhyme or reason….

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Advice to a college daughter

I am submitting this to the Daily Prompt: Careful.

I talked to a young woman recently who left the college that my daughter is going to.

And then I gave my daughter advice.

“If you are attacked or assaulted, sexually or otherwise, do not go to the campus police. Go to the city police. Or better yet, a State Trooper.”

Because, you see, the Campus Police work for the school. It is a conflict of interest.

If you are attacked, get a friend. Have them help you get to the City or State Police. Have them record your initial story on their cell phone. Have them photograph any injuries, torn clothes, you crying while you tell them. If you are raped, have your friend get you to the City or State Police and then to an emergency room for a rape kit. This is documentation of your story. Write out what happened the next day. Keep all of it. It is admissible in court. Name names. Tell every word that you can remember that the other person said. Try to figure out if there are any witnesses.

Because too many men lie. Men lie in our culture and the system dismisses what women and girls say, dismisses domestic violence, dismisses assault, dismisses rape. You do not want to be Cosbyed or Trumped. You will not stand for it. None of us should stand for it.

Fight back. Stand up. We will not tolerate this culture and we will make it stop.