nccotus

“Trouble Me”

a song by Natalie Merchant, Ten Thousand Maniacs, back in the early ’90s.

I played music loud in the car and at home because it seemed to quell Ian, an infant in trouble.

Alex used to yell when I was pregnant and I feared for my baby.

I tried to write a poem:

it started, “I am that I am said the cradle to the pram./ Waste not Want not…”

the rest I couldn’t fathom.

Recently i wanted to post in this regard but was sideswiped by other things.

so, I have come back to this tonight.

I so want Ian to come to me with his pain and woe.

I so want a world without such pain and woe.

I so want others along the way to have been there for him when I couldn’t without harming him for it as I didn’t know how to be grateful. I was just so desperate for the help. Money changed hands at times but that wasn’t always enough. We had it going on for a while with a private school where Ian and his four best friends were simultaneously attending. Our five families were working together for our kids. Three of them were all a few blocks from one another, childhood playmates.

So, it was sweet for a while in South Florida.

then the dart, an eye injury. It blew us away. One of the kids tossed a dart in his direction and it lodged in his eye. He was lucky to be alive. A year later I threw a HOT cup of coffee at him, not meaning to harm him, it hit him in his face, in other words it caught him in the eye. I just threw it in his general direction when I was calling 911 on a party that was scaring me and he was trying to make me hang up.

I got tasered for this. Bounced on my head and got up again, had a serious concussion for 18 days in the police psych ward. Also lucky to be alive but so shamed.

he was in agony and blinded all over again for I don’t know how long, my mother came to pick me up for the psych ward and took me back here to PA.

it felt like it all ended there.

But I went back to Florida. PA felt like a dead end at that time.

here I am trying to find a foothold here in the wake of the divorce and I brought Ian with me as there was also no future for him in Florida; as discerned by his father. He has a lot of background here from childhood experiences.

I am no longer able to return to Florida, i think about it at times but never really go there, I wanted to return to Buffalo, NY but my father wouldn’t permit it. I didn’t really understand about that at the time. He was able to derail my plans.

I would have needed family support to go there.

what happened instead was horrific,

Given that I returned to PA, I was desperate to get to a place I knew in Quakertown and that just didn’t happen.

but I am pleased to say that I have arrived back on those shores at this time and ready to pick up with a new life here where those old pain and woes can be met with grace.