Tales of a Boundary Ninja

Greetings Gentle Readers,

First, may I say thank you so much for all the encouragement and support from everyone? Knowing I am not alone, knowing that there are safe people, that there are people I can trust now, has been a bulwark against the myriad of memories being dredged up.  I have so appreciated all of you who have come alongside of me with your care, concern and kind words, it has helped so very much.

I am slowly working through all the feelings surrounding both my brother’s death and the revelation that my aunt had known SOMETHING about my father but never told my mother. I have been very much struggling, especially with the latter, as it has brought my past vividly back to life. The triggering has been intense in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I saw BN yesterday which helped immensely because it was a safe place to express how I was feeling and be met with understanding and acceptance. I plan on writing more about that later, but tonight I wanted to share a poem I wrote. It’s not really a “normal” entry for me, as I tend to end things on a hopeful note. And I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I think things are hopeless. One thing I have been immensely grateful for these past few weeks are my utterly lovely husband who has been incredibly supportive through this. The other thing is knowing the security and safety, and yes, love, I have with BN is a shelter. I was not safe and protected then, but I am now. I’m going to work through this. In discussing it, my sister and I realized we both believe this has come to light now because we’re strong enough to face it. All that said, it has been painful. My brother’s death and looking back over his life, followed by realizing the betrayal of even the extended family has in some ways forced me to grapple with just how bad it really was. I think a significant part of my healing journey has been the slow recognition of just how wrong it all was. So this poem is more about expressing that pain than offering any hope or solution, but my hope is that if you have known this pain that it might ease it just a bit to know that you are not alone.

Family Visit

The landscape is devastated and laid waste
Burnt out buildings and salted fields
wreckage everywhere and nothing of life left
No wonder I had fled,
who in their right mind would not have?
Searching far and wide, through time,
to find a place which would sustain life
Soil in which I could thrive
Taxed to the utmost at journey’s end
Stood a vale untouched by the war
which had ravaged through my country
A good place, of safety and surplus
A place to learn what home really meant,
a place to create a loving one
Until Death, as it always does, intruded
Forcing me to travel back
to gaze once more upon the scorched earth
I had left as a child
How widespread the destruction had been
No one left unscathed
All that should have been there of beauty had been destroyed
Leaving the inhabitants to wander across a barren landscape
Using whatever they could grub from the broken earth,
No matter how twisted or deformed, to survive
Some lost hope, squatting among the dregs, eking out an existence
A life actually lived just another luxury destroyed in the carnage
Some traveled onward, driven by a blind trusting faith
That somewhere there was life, a land untouched by this war
Offering more than survival, and entrapment in rage
A terrible choice, but those who refused to leave were left behind
Easy to forget the wreckage and ugliness living far away in a fairer land
Forced to travel back, there was a shock of recognition
The devastation had been that complete
that even those who escaped
would carry scars even on to their graves
While others, newly dead, had been swallowed whole
by the chasms opened by the evil that had dwelt there
Known but never spoken of, allowed to reign unchecked
Such was the cost
Never had they left the stench of burning, or the ugliness of the rubble
That which would have flowered in another place was left to wither
Wasted in a vast stony silence
Until Death came as a friend, their only surcease from the agony of that past

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