It was his friend who eventually called me. Someone he had been in relation to since 2009. That was fourteen years ago. I never once saw this woman in all that time. She had no social media pictures. She never revealed herself on FaceTime calls or in family photos. She didnt show up at my moms house when mom had her stroke. When they took mom by train from moms home in the north to his and her home in the south, she said she wouldnt care for mom unless she was paid. Thats the kind of family she was. Not.
I vaguely recall a conversation with her soon after she moved in with my brother. It seemed she was a victim of her upbringing and it sounded strangely familiar. In fact she could have been describing my childhood. Which she was. Which she had heard from my brother. Which she made out to be hers. Maybe to engender empathy.
Once I got it, I really liked it when Oracle Girl said, if youre an empath, youre pretty fucked up.
Think on it awhile and the meaning surfaces. If it doesnt, its sure to materialize as you continue reading. Thats how these essays go, circling in a spiral around a point that returns again and again, aiming to reach the one last point that distills it all and maybe puts everything to rest.
The next major thing to occur in my relationship with this person was her returning a photo of myself that had been in our grandmothers hallway. A little smiling me in large format, a photo my mother had rejected as imperfect and one my beloved grandmother rescued and displayed prominently for mom and anyone else to see, soon as they entered her home. When grandmother died, my brother inherited it, claimed it, or took on the burden of it— who knows. Perhaps he rescued it again.
Anyway, the woman who made her way into my brothers life via eHarmony, the one who loaded photos into her profile that werent accurate, the one who showed up months later in person after wooing him via telephone into her life, the one who was 20 years older, 40 pounds heavier, jobless with a debt of 50K and very keen to marry, met my brother in person and he waived all that he saw on the surface for all the catfishing she had done online or by phone. Not to be swayed by appearances, not wanting to be superficial, he said, there was something spiritual happening here.
Where have I heard that before?
What spirit comes to trick and train?
That woman! She found it in her heart to return the large formatted me back to me. Thought you would like this, she wrote. I had a sense that wasnt why she sent it. If only I had dug around in that sense a bit deeper, but I was already entrenched in the motorheads game and I had not yet learned how these sorts of players play ball. In their game, getting rid of insider relations and long time friendships is imperative. Any potential reminders are cleared out of the space. Keep the subject isolated. Like in the globalcorpus-covidcrisis-lockdown. People died from the isolation.
She started sending emails that were addressed to undisclosed recipients and contained the everyday current fear mongering conspiracy claptrap propaganda that works the other side of mainstream psyops. I like to think there is a side of truth, and I have an inkling, if not a conviction, that truth would not scare the shit out of me like her emails did. So I started sending them to junk and soon enough AI did the same and I forgot about her and her scary messages.
My mom had nothing to say about her at all for the longest time, which is a bad sign. When my mom finally admitted her impression of that woman, she nailed it to the worst possible designation my mom, given her biases, could pin on anyone. That woman, I hear my moms voice, is a Frump.
Evidently, she didnt take care of herself. An overweight smoker, frumpish and unattractive. If you put this character next to my brother you would never recognize a relationship. As one of his college friends said, He was the total package! He was ripped and buffed and excelled in everything, be it athletics or academics. He was good and good looking. He was earnest. He was kind. He was smart. He was inclusive. He was enlightened. He was steady. He was real.
Im so sad and sorry to say, he missed the part about what it looks like is what it is, despite what the mouth on it may be saying.
If only I had not stayed in the room with the hypnotist guru, the one I gazed at for three days before my subconscious unhinged and started seeing all manner of magical deities and golden wonders around him. I could have left on day one. Thats when I saw he was only a backcountry motorhead filled with biblical visions turned deceptive, science fiction stories he made up, and a need for some kind of livelihood. So I get it. It is possible to believe what isnt true and be forced by unseen internal mechanisms to disregard any visible signs that clearly point to what is actually right in front of our eyes.
When my youngest niece was still a child, and she met the frump for the first time, she said to her mom, I thought his girlfriend would be pretty. She could not understand what she was seeing. It did not add up. Never able to convince the family of an inner beauty, the frump took a darker course of action.
After the return of the photograph, my brother disappeared for a long time. Then mom died. He called to tell me. He said he had seen her before she passed, sat with her and read to her from her old leather bound Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, blued verses never wiped cleaned. The chapter on Being, he said. When he finished reading he got up and went to the door and turned back to her and said good bye. That was it he said to me, thats the last I saw of her, and we were silent for a good long time. We knew mom like very few people knew mom, and in more ways than a obituary says it, we had survived her.
I had pulled to the side of the road to take his call. I would always take his call wherever I might be. They came so rarely. They always meant something. Otherwise it was a cheery text or email. Never signed with love. Usually on a birthday or after the completion of one of his projects. I missed him when those messages came in. I miss him so much now.
Old friends met the frump when she traveled with my brother for a short visit. She left in a huff during a dinner conversation about childbirth. In the frumps belief system, women after childbirth should never have to work again. But doesnt that go against all that women have worked for in the last century, asked my brothers long time friend? In response, the frump up and walk out of the house.
Dont mind her said my brother, and he left his friends homey accommodations to placate her in a hotel room.
This is how the motorheads do it! They create a burning bush and you have to answer to their god and when you do, everyone else disappears. They make sure of it. You are alone with the bush and watching it burn. Everything is burning and you are so alone. The very thing you were doing your level best to avoid.
Many years ago, my brother and his former wife adopted a child. We all loved her. She was adorable and smart and sassy. Years later, that child met the frump. What I heard was this. The frump told her that she wasnt really wanted in the family. Her father didnt actually care for her, and she was only bothering him and wouldnt it be best if she cut all ties and avoid getting hurt?
Burn. Burning. Burnt.
No looks, no money, no skills but the ability to deceive and damage. This deception and mistreatment happened in the motorheads cult as well. Once the penismind had had someone in his beasty bed, they were, in due time, cut off from further communion without explanation. They were left to imagine, why was there no more contact? What to do? Change their wills to leave him everything? Lose even more weight? Impress him with even more outstanding survival skills? Without support or understanding of what was happening, people died, or almost died.
My niece has lived but not freely or easily.
Mystified by cruelty, I tend to think of animals, consumed with survival, and consuming. What creature has gotten into the human kingdom, taken possession of a person, endowing them with inhuman qualities? Maybe animals grab an opportunity in a dangerous situation to jump species? What evolutionary glitch or alien presence interrupted human development and interjected a different species, like in the movie, Annihilation? Maybe in a perceived situation of danger, a human unconsciously borrows survival strategies from fellow creatures, reaching into ancient DNA and finding a way to survive? God knows.
Poisonous. Small. Ugly. Threatened when their isolated spaces are disturbed. Dependent on others to survive, to suck the liquid life from their bodies, bodies trapped within their webs.
"Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly;
" 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to shew when you are there."
"Oh no, no!" said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
Over a brewed cup of coffee with lots of rbGH fortified half and half, I asked my niece what happened. Where did she go? Why had she disappeared? Why had we not heard from her in over a decade? The loud music in the desert lounge faded from hearing as she explained.
I phoned my dad one day and she picked up the phone. She told me not to call anymore. He didnt want to hear from me. The family wanted nothing to do with me. I was a bother to him and his family, so stop bothering him, she said, and hung up.
Im lounging in the lounge and my feet are balanced on a chair but on the inside I am reeling. What creature conjures a full blown lie with a sharp shooters aim at a daughters deepest wound? Deception was her strategy, just like the crackpot motorhead. The outside shines with glossy words of truth and love but the inside is dark with lies and malice should you get too close to their prey.
"I'm sure you must be weary, with soaring up so high,
Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the spider to the fly.
"There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin;
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in."
"Oh no, no!" said the little fly, "for I've often heard it said,
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!”
For what am I writing this down? That someone reading might feel the vibration of it in their own system, might sense the experience hidden in their own tissues, could recognize their own endurance in a life of coercion and manipulation, and could feel moved to look out of their imprisonment, perhaps gain a view of different possibilities, free from the unscrupulous hands of the weak, the ugly and the cruel. Im writing this down to get the trauma out of my body. If these sensations remain locked in the physical body through neglect, talk therapies or medications I am doomed to repeating these patterns of annihilation and die inside of them.Think on the fucked-upness of empathy. Its not empathy that will heal my wounds. I dont need someone to feel for me. Wokedom is making the use of empathy an obvious tyranny. From whatever measure of strength, courage and understanding I can find in the zones of abuse and destruction, I want to trade in my victim hood for a beanie of power. No easy task. Surviving mom means Ive internalized many ways to victimize myself for what appears to be going off the rails. Thats only another thread in the hidey-hood. For loves sake and truths sake, I want to rise up. Not into another battleground but into my own full ability and into the wonder of being me for goodness sake.
Said the cunning spider to the fly, "Dear friend, what shall I do,
To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?
I have, within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome – will you please to take a slice?"
"Oh no, no!" said the little fly, "kind sir, that cannot be,"
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see."
If full blown deception is too obvious, frumps and motorheads go for love bombing. If they see their false sincerity is suspected, and they are sure to be exposed, they reach for the devils favorite impiety, one of the easiest to engage, vainglory in the self. This is what the frump has made for me, a fat juicy love bomb that flatters and frames a different picture to be believed, using my brothers integrity to convince me of its worth.
"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise.
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I have a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day."
Left alone with a relative for the time it takes a man to get up from the table and go to the loo, she turned on that mans wife and made accusations of her husbands evil intent. This was a tactic the motorhead also applied, telling wives to leave husbands, husbands to leave wives, whenever a spouse refused to be complicit in his crooked schemes.
In another surprise attack, she spoke of the venom and anger that spews from the family, people intent to harm her and dislodge her and perhaps who knows, nobody does, even you she said to me, could be in the party to ambush me. But youre not one of them, now are you? You are different. I can tell. Your brother was so proud of you and he is one to know.
Its rare that Shakespear comes to my mind but now, Dispute not with her; she is lunatic— a lunatic who has engorged herself on other peoples resources, seeking funds from any empath willing to help cover all her costs.
The spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew, the silly fly would soon come back again:
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner, sly,
And set his table ready, to dine upon the fly.
Then he went out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
"Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple – there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead.”
I will not frame my brothers departure in any part of this old frumps fabrication. Thats for the likes of the New York Post, long standing rag of fake news and trumped-up stories. FYI anyone can write any cockamamie story on Go Fund Me to engage your empathy and suck off of your good faith. Nonetheless a real story is coming clear. How deep the damage went, so deep as to never allow for the actualization of true partnership, one of nurture and of care.
Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little fly,
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue:–
Thinking only of her crested head, poor foolish thing! – At last
Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour – but she ne'er came out again!
– And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.
— Mary Howitt (1829)
The undercurrent of this writing is about the wounding mother. If the wounds inflicted are left untreated, they keep aspects of a life forever childish, incapable of emotional growth into a whole human adult. I see my own childishness as I write, my own immaturity, my own lunacy within family relations. I admit I swapped treatment of the wound for an escape into something spiritual. I have no gusto left for blaming frumps and motorheads, or the animal kingdom for that matter. It has all come down to me and what next I may become. There are energies about that are urging transformation. There are powers in play that are planning to criminalize life as we know it. Natural resources are being decimated by rascals and monsters. Meanwhile a rebirth is in play, meant to align with truth in the midst of crass disruption. I do not doubt that the motorheads are organized. I expect the frumps to continue sermonizing with falsehoods. But who am I? What will I become? How do I realize my next self? Im ready for a makeover. Im up for a whole new package of myself for this world. How will my inner self, tooled by the past, manifest boldly anew in my still existing body?
Powerfully written Jess. What an amazing talent. Thank you for your generous sharing and exposing for all to see. Love you.
Dearest little Fly, worry not. For you have proven the strength of your wings to fly above and beyond the world of Trumps, Frumps and Motorheads! Nevermore to be sucked into such sticky falsehoods, you can thank your teachers for that much at most. Clear eyed now and free, you have risen from the cocoon to find you're brilliantly coloured, attractive, talented, and full of purpose. Not a scrawny little fly at all, but a rare and magnificent creature of consequence. Write on.