Male Bonding

No ‘Thank You!’

Candid Corvid Productions

One day, in his “affable innocence” mode, he sought her out to present his family of wife and child(ren) to her.

“Hey, I just want to thank you for helping to set me right on my path!” he exclaimed, proud of his accomplishments.

And in this act, he completely ignored the fact that her own heart had been broken and was being torn open – yet again – in this societal expectation of her to be gracious and flattered by his flaunting appreciation.

(Title play on phrase “No, thank you.”)

Male Bonding

The Narcissist

Candid Corvid Productions

As she walked into the restaurant to have lunch with her friend, she glanced around and noticed the guy on a date with a young woman.

Reflecting on the brief history they’d had together where he had pigeonholed her away from friendship, isolated and limited their interactions to only short texts and intimacy in the bedroom, and abruptly pushed her away energetically when they briefly encountered each other in public, she realized that breaking things off with him had been the best thing for her to do to reclaim her own sense of power, sanctity, and emotional security.

Male Bonding

Waking From A Dream

Candid Corvid Productions

She was newly married again and trying to tell her husband that she needed his help to grow and learn with him in their styles of communication when his mother, sister, and grandmother suddenly appeared and began roaming around outside of the house, peeking in through and tapping loudly on the windows, insisting that he join them for plans and ignoring her requests for them to wait in front while she spoke with him.

The couple was already caught in a point of deep misunderstanding because her husband had taken her attempt to clarify how she was feeling as criticism that he was doing something wrong – which she was trying hard to show that her asking for help did not imply a lack of adequacy on his side, but rather, that she wanted to build a wonderful relationship with him.

However, he had responded by shutting down with wounded feelings to where she now felt stuck in the role of pursuing while he kept retreating – whereupon the women had shown up and were making a mess of her hard-challenged attempts to rebridge with him.

Then the house burst into noise and chaos as the women entered the house using a key that her husband had given them to access caring for pets and plants while the couple had been away on honeymoon.

They began monopolizing and demanding his attention.

He turned away from his wife, completely missing her point, and focused on this new distraction as his wife felt outnumbered four-to-one as her efforts were squashed.

Flustered as the other women now dominated the couple’s home, the wife raised her voice and began asserting her own firmness that the women must give her the key; that they couldn’t just burst into the newlyweds’ home without prior agreement; and that they had to leave now and give her and her husband time to finish their conversation to ensure their solid rebonding before the women could integrate into the couple’s new relationship.

This caused a resistant outburst reaction by the women and her husband, and she felt labeled as controlling – when in fact, the women were running all over her and her husband’s situation, expecting their prior family interactions to be as they had always been, with maybe now the wife included as a side-kick.

Then, her husband defaulted to just giving into his relatives’ demands, seeming relieved to shift back to this “known” and no longer talk with his wife about difficult and confusing, personal subjects.

As he left with them to mollify their ruffled pride and egos, the wife could not take the crushing, isolated position they’d all placed and left her in and soon began packing to return to her prior solace living singly that she had learned long ago she could always depend upon.

Altered States

Shoe Angst

Candid Corvid Productions

I regret tossing the shoes with the hole – oh, how I regret it!

They fit me so well and kept me balanced with smooth transitioning stability poised directly under me.

Keds, sweet Keds…

Gone – all gone!

The replacement shoe pair that I found are hard-sole-lifted under feet, making it painful for weight-bearing philanges to shift over as if clamboring and causing deep stress to torn attachments around hips from stalted movement ambulating.

And the other pair of shoes that are softer but sunk down and too long that I hadn’t worn since before the accident wrenched my leg struts and surprisingly shifted balance off, causing sense of as if I’m about to blackout and hindbrain dizziness!

Altered States

When Puppets Become Real People

Candid Corvid Productions

We are taught to be as puppets and to let others pull our strings, dictate how our strings shall be pulled, and to dance to these janky rhythms with distort our truths and leave us discarded on a shelf when “masters” are done “playing.”

Well, if we are not loved for doing these things we were told that we would be loved for, maybe we should all just cut our strings.

(Title reference to the story of “Pinocchio”)

A Return To Innocence

“God’s” Plan

Candid Corvid Productions

“I do not know for sure about ‘God’s’ existence.

But I do know that Love exists as pure Good intension’s essence.

And when humans embody love and share it’s nourishment, people heal and flourish – and the whole world can heal and flourish by Love’s beneficience, creating ‘Paradise on Earth’ as ‘God’ has ‘promised.’

In this way, it can be seen that ‘God’s Will’ can ‘work through us’ by our ‘Right’ actions in truely loving one another.

Now, I do not feel comfortable at all with the thought of allowing some ‘entity’ to come and go inside my body at any time just ‘willy-nilly’ as religion preaches that people should open up to allow ‘God’ to do.

Feels a bit too much like allowing some kind of ‘possession!’

But Love, itself…ah, Love…

This is something that will always have a home inside of my mind, soul, and body.

And perhaps, this is the real take home message for humans.

Let Love live inside of us and grow between us.

This, in essence, is true Goodness.”

Where Demons Tread

Tattered Angel

Candid Corvid Productions

Where is it Good
That I have been

Cast out of Heaven
To dwell in darkness

Forced to boost my children to
Catch only glimpses of the sun

Holding by weakening arms
Struggling to remain strong

When I once had wings and
Could have raised them high

Giving them the whole world
Without stunted compromise

And how they feared to own truth
When learned wings could burn

How they fought my good reasoning
When witnessed unjust punishment –

Thinking perhaps it was best to accept
Living in darkness as payment’s safety

How we each fought our demons
Cornering us to mistrust our love

How we struggled to uncover our truth
Buried in wreckage, cleansed by tears

Until at last they grew strong enough to
Turn inward and embrace the true self

Pushing me aside, soft to abruptly
As every child must do, eventually

And realized their own wings
Had not burned from the fall

Where Demons Tread

Distorting Reality

Candid Corvid Productions

When he and his partner had children, it was an opportunity to ensure correction of how they had been poorly raised by their own parents.

They could now rewrite the script and grow their own children in love by cooperatively working as a team together for the greater good of their family.

But he got spooked at being in this arrangement because his childhood had been filled with destructive behaviors and actions against him by a dominating and controlling single mother.

So he kept looking for any flaw within his partner, picking on her “playfully” as he cut down her confidence and subverted her efforts and careful plans aimed at creating their advancing stability.

He tormented her positivity and innovative reasoning until, after too many years, she at last broke down into nerves and lashed out at him, “justifying” his inherent mistrust.

He took a good, solid woman and turned her into “a monster” because of his own fears – then cast her off to single parent in poverty.

Altered States

Ends Of Days

Candid Corvid Productions

“As some animals have developed heart failure, liver cancer, and now possibly mouth cancer, I must at least say to myself that these are indicators that I succeeded at providing quality longevity of life for them – although it does not make sense to me that achievement means death by old age diseases, because it would feel more right if youthful health were further prolonged.”

Altered States

Faith

Candid Corvid Productions

Unfortunately, Faith requires belief when it is difficult to see or feel tangibles.

There is no real reassurance except shifting one’s self into pushing aside lockdown fear while doing whatever one can to get to show up for those miracles.

Even if that means only being able to do one thing per day.

Because once one gets the momentum going to do that one thing, just in passing one might be able to accomplish a few more other vital things.

And before one knows it, many hurtles have been overcome which seemed impossible or, at least, improbable.

The road isn’t easy, though.