Visiting other's lives

Libra Horoscope for week of May 20, 2010




"All 26 of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories about Tarzan are set in Africa, but he never once visited that continent. And Bram Stoker didn't feel the need to travel to the Transylvanian region of Romania in order to write about it in his novel Dracula. But I don't recommend this approach to you in the coming weeks, Libra. If you want to cultivate something new in your life by drawing on an exotic influence, I think you should immerse yourself in that exotic influence, at least for a while. If you want to tap into the inspiration available through an unfamiliar source, you need to actually be in the presence of that unfamiliar source. "

When I was a child I remember feeling free and happy.....full of light and joy...I thought my existence was perfect.  I can remember that place before Life showed her cracks and tarnish.....before the depth of madness and neglect came for an extended stay and wouldn't leave.  I only loved my mother truly and deeply and was her champion and protector.  I was five years old.

Some of you know about the years that followed, circumstances beyond my doing....some of you know me from later on.  I want you to know that I was so totally unprepared for the Truth about what was going on around me that perhaps it needed to become so extreme. 

I became aware of a huge wrongness that permeated my life.....and I began ot assert what I felt was right and good.  The summer I left home for good I filled with love and music and friendship.  I stood in the face of despair and not only did I defy that despair, I blew it up. 

I had become a visitor into other people's lives.  I was an unwanted house guest deemed necessary because I was a child, because the law said so, because family obligations spoke up.  I became a professional witness into other people's lives.  With that view came some extras.

I remember being upstairs alone in my foster family's house.  It was sweltering outside, humid and oppressive with July's heat in New York.  Everyone was downstairs in the converted basement.  I was in the upstairs bathroom and that room was ice cold.  There was no air conditioning....this was before central heat and air existed.  I KNEW something was wrong in that room.  I felt it whenever I was in it.  These are the things that I got as a gift for being a visitor into other's lives.  Why didn't anyone else feel the cold in that room?  Why didn't the adults fix it?  Something was very very wrong in that bathroom.  As children do, I kept my mouth shut about it, never complaining or making a fuss.  Trying to not be there, trying to blend in, disappear.  That of course was impossible....I wouldn't know how to disappear if my life depended on it but I digress.

Eventually I found out why the bathroom was so cold and why my foster parents had started taking in foster children.  My foster father was a big, strong, Italian retired NYPD.  By the time I met him, Sonny, was the owner of an auto shop.  He and his wife Teresa had three children of their own.  I learned about their fourth child....the oldest son....their pride and joy.  He had overdosed in that upstairs bathroom.  I felt his spirit there the entire time I lived with that family.  All pictures of that oldest son were gone.  And a series of needy children paraded through their home, being housed and sheltered, fed and raised.  That family was deemed suitable to raise other people's children when they had a huge hole in their lives.  Of course no one else felt him but me.

I forget how many places I moved into and out of as a child......even into young adulthood.  The idea of living in one place a person's entire life was beyond me.  Packing 'my hopes inside a matchbox' became second nature to me.  So much that I waited for things to end so I could move on.  When that didn't happen on its own, I would move events along so that once again I was thrust into a new situation. 

I find no fault or place blame with anyone who I lived with.  I see now that we all do the best we can, share what we have with those that have less than we do, and try to hold onto normality as best we can.  My many visits into other people's families gave me some safety and a lot of fear of rejection. 

It is ironic to me that I wanted to have a place to grow into and have roots to grow my own family but had not one tool in which to accomplish that.  I had no idea how to find a stable, secure partner that I could rely on much less partner me in the true ways I needed.  So I did what I knew how to do from such a young age........I made the most out of the smallest and deemed that good enough.  

You know it wasn't good enough....there was no stability, no security, no partnering.  I didn't know that I was bringing a talent to only visit a situation....a relationship....a life.....not actually have it as my own. 

And so when you're speaking to me of fond childhood memories.....rooted in your secure place please try and remember that I really only visited those places you got to live within for your entire childhood.  I am happy you had all of that and so much more.  I wouldn't have it any other way......but please don't forget I only visited my childhood and got to be an observer.