For All Of Us ( The Last Chapter )
I once told a lady on a plane, 'You have to go through the heartache in
order to find the Light of Love, and the Light of GOD, within
yourself.'
I could not embrace the truth of this, nor recognize the beauty that surrounded me, until I found this beauty within me.
A great philosopher once said, 'When the student is ready the teacher
will come.' I have known many great teachers throughout my life, and
now I am one. And yet I tell you now, someone wiser than me chooses my
words, for even I am surprised by what I learn.
I love being here. I love the sunsets, the sunrises. I know that it is
an honor to simply be AWARE of being AWARE. I am in AWE of the wonder
of this world.
In the beginning I saw only love's pain, it's beauty forever hidden
from me back then. It was a hard road my friend, and yet at this end of
my life I am eternally grateful for who I am.
We paint a picture with words, and the picture is a lonely one. We 'who
wear the mark' are many in number. We live in all areas of the world.
We are born to rich and poor alike. We walk silently among you. You
look right at us. We look right at you. But you do not see. Within us
we carry the secret seeds of heartache. We mask our secrets under
layers of denial, in a vain attempt to protect ourselves from a world
we know will do us harm.
'The mask if worn long enough, becomes the face.'
She is the very best part of 'Who I Really Am.' She is everything
beautiful about me. There are few who have been able to see her. Small
children see her, but they don't know they see. Animals can see her,
and the very old as well, very few others are aware of her existence.
We have been given this life. We do not choose who our family will be.
We do not choose their actions towards us. It is for us to learn to
stand strong and be faithful to 'Who we really are.'
One of my friend's kid, a young man named Garrett, told me, 'The reason
the other kids like you so much isn't because you are easy on them.
It's because you remember what it's like to be a kid.' He couldn't have
paid me a better compliment.
'Mary,' my little friend asked, 'What is the Soul?'
'Your Soul is the deepest best part of who you really are.'
'You mean -- It's our conscience!' another boy exclaimed.
'Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Your Soul is you conscience.'
A Moment of Kindness
The streets are empty on this rainy night
It makes a sad and lonely sight
The lights all turned off
I see not one friendly house
on this dark, dark night
The people who love
The people who care
All shut their doors
when they see you there.
The time they cannot spare
to the sad and lonely
who are always around somewhere.
The time it takes to show you care
could be spent combing your hair.
When we wither up and die
all alone in the dark someone says,
They always were kind of strange in the head.
But I know
And God knows
we died because no one
could find the time it takes
To show they cared.
A moment of kindness
Can carry us through a lifetime of heartache.
How long is a moment?
As long as it takes.
I will never again be sorry for my life, and never again will I hide. I
know what I felt is felt by all. Yet, having said this, we remain ever
so sad that the world recreates our heartache, forever adding to the
burdens that tear into the heart of our Universe.
A great philosopher said, 'All roads lead back to the self.'
I tried to get away. I tried to run from her. The more I ran, the more the past haunted me.
All of my life I have tried to escape my upbringing. And all of my life
I kept running right into it. I am not running anymore. This is my
life. This is who I am. So listen carefully,
'I am not sorry for any of it.'
Now, more than ever, I understand: The time we have been given is
precious regardless of the heartaches that come our way. I understand
that I cannot change the past. I can only attempt to effect the future.
When I was young the one thing that struck me as incredible was that no
one seemed to notice how crushingly sad I had become, how sad we all
had become. No one saw Little Kim's sadness either, even though she
wore it plainly on her face two days before her murder.
Maybe with my writings we can draw a picture the world won't forget.
Maybe we can help someone else find their way out of Hell.
The Face of Regret
The emotional scars are painful
and oh so very deep
They haunt me when awake,
They haunt me when I sleep
I fall on my knees Lord,
I cry. I beg. I pray.
I'm lost in this madness
that I live in everyday.
No one can help me Lord,
Though quite a few have tried.
The only peace I see for me
Is when they say,
She Died.
Finally Lord when my eyes are closed in death,
When my heart beats its last
And I have drawn my last breath
Maybe then Lord,
I will have some peace at last
Won't have to hurt anymore
About the present or the past.
Maybe, Oh God, just maybe,
My spirit will know your Will
After this flesh is dead
And I can no longer feel.
I need to be buried with my pets Lord,
Buried in the dirt.
Bury me deep Lord
So I no longer hurt.
This bullet Lord, will be my final friend
To those who may have loved me,
I'm sorry this cold piece of metal
Helped me meet my earthly end.
I wanted to be better,
Wanted to be more than I am
A lost and lonely soul in this Cosmos,
A soul that has so long been damned.
God, tells us the same thing, 'We are all walking in the same direction. We have just taken different paths to get there.'
To His words of wisdom I add this thought, 'Denial doesn't make the truth go away.'
I have attempted many different ways to escape myself, and my memories.
I tried drinking alcohol. However, alcohol has never been a successful
means of escape for me. It often left me feeling even worse at the end
of the evening than I did at the beginning. This along with throwing
up, and the threat of ulcers, was enough to understand that God would
not let me escape myself through alcohol.
Drugs, whether they are prescription, or over-the-counter, do not agree
with my system; Depression being a big side effect, you see, not to
mention infected kidneys. So drugs as a means of escape would not work
for me either.
I tried sex. I wish I could say that sex did the trick. However, as you
already know, I have had one husband, and a throw-back to the sixties,
when free love was the thing with three same sex relationship. I am
finally, blissfully, single. I do miss sex. I miss the warmth of a
lover arms. However, sex has always left me feeling empty, and alone. I
cannot find any peace in the arms of a lover.
I walk with confidence now, much as I would walk with an old friend. I
wear my hair the way I want. I dress the way I want. I speak my truth
quietly and clearly, most times. I walk tall, and I hold my head up.
And I try to hurt no one.
Yet, inside of me, always looking outward, is the wisdom of a lonely
child. A child who gazes into the face of forever, seeing the truth of
our lives.
And then the child cries.
Sometimes a child can be born sad, born with a predisposition to feel
the pain of others, and to experience the sharpness of rejection more
intensely than most.
A wise friend once told me, 'Father's come and go in a child's life,
and the child survives. The child does all right. But a child that
grows up without a mother's love will always struggle.'
The smallest creature can understand a mother's love, or the absence of
that love. I understand this now. Dear sweet mama, she meant no harm,
not to us, not to anyone. Her only crime is that she fell in love.
However, my understanding does nothing to ease my mother's pain, for
the old woman she has become hates the young woman that she was.
The Garden of Eden
Remember the story of Adam and Eve.
Born into the Garden of Eden.
They had everything.
Then the Devil,
Disguised as Desire so Sweet,
Tempted Eve
And here we be.
Lowly creatures,
Born in sin,
Destined for Hell if we don't repent.
The 'Garden of Eden'
is a state of mind.
I can live in Heaven.
Or I can live in Hell.
The choice has always been mine.
Then in steps Desire.
I want what I shouldn't have.
Will I be selfish?
Take what I need?
Or will I step aside?
Skip this heartache waiting for me.
Ennie, Meanie, Minnie, Moe.
This time I don't know.
I am consumed with Desire.
My loins on fire.
I am Hungry.
Hungry with Desire.
The Apple!
The apple is right there.
Just this one time.
Just one bite.
Just tonight.
I am so tired of this fight.
My mother cannot change the past, anymore than anymore than I can,
anymore than you can. We all grieve for our lost dreams. We can accept
this loss as God's Will, and move on, or we can stay trapped in the
past, denying ourselves the comfort of the love we truly feel.
It's just life.
If it were only my family then perhaps I could more easily find anger
within myself, anger and contempt for those who acted without thinking.
It isn't just my family though. It happens everyday, at every level of
income, every level of education, and in every country. We are,
unfortunately, not alone with our soul's secret sorrows.
I wish I could bring comfort to all of us. But bitterness seems to much
apart of who we have allowed ourselves to become; To much apart of
everyone we see, and everyone we love.
I cannot hate those who cause heartache to come our way. It is not
within me to fill my heart with anger. I am always so hurt by the
emotions that hate produces within me, always so worn out by the level
of life energy required to maintain the fires of Hell that hate
produces.
'I feel what you feel, and it wears me out. It drains all of my energy
from me. I can only imagine what it does to you to feel the full
magnitude of your emotions.'
I pray for mother, my daughters, my son, my sister and brother,
everyone, everywhere, will hear these words, words which speak the
truth, and bring comfort, at long last, to troubled souls.
'We all possess the power to turn our boat around, and find higher ground.'
'You are sensitive.' If only I had a nickel for every time I heard
this. I would be richer than Scrooge McDuck. Being sensitive 'is who I
am.' Imagine that! And to think I used to hate myself for this.
This is my life.
How I went from a place of darkness to a place of light within myself
is a struggle I feel compelled to share with others. It is my hope, and
my fervent prayer to God, that our story will ease the pain of those
who follow us into this world. That we will be able to reach out and
help a friend find their way out of Hell, and back into God's loving
embrace.
Life is a gift, a precious gift, even amidst the pain, and heartache,
and suffering. We will only get to be this person one time. We will
never get to walk this path again. I can choose to walk with
understanding and forgiveness. Or I can choose to walk with anger and
bitterness. The choice is mine.
I must find a way to turn heartache into triumph. The reality of my
life is this: 'What Is -- Is, and can never not be.' And I had better
find a way to make peace with my life, otherwise the harm that was done
to me will never stop owning my soul. And he who caused it will have
won.
In choosing to walk with understanding and forgiveness I have found a
sense of peace within myself. I still walk with doubt. I am still
haunted by desires that I know, if I give in, will only hurt me in the
end. Everyday is a struggle to maintain a sense of balance, and to do
no harm. I am not perfect; I am, in fact, quite lonely at times.
And yet I am still at peace.
The power to chose lies within all of us. Why are we so afraid to exercise this power? A power that God has given to us.
We each have a path in this life that we have chosen to walk. Someone
once said, 'You choose this life long before you are born.'
In Neale Donald Walsh's Book, Conservation's with God, book 4, God
said, 'Everything that has happened to you has been perfect for what
your soul needs to learn.'
It would seem that I was born this way for I cannot hate those who have
caused harm to come my way. It was their choice. Believe it or not, I
actually feel sad for them. Theirs is a true sin. A sin that their soul
will wear into Eternity. I cannot hate them, as they has chosen the
harder road to travel.
I feel only love for those who hurt us. If they do not regret the
choices they made, that's ok. How they feel doesn't change the outcome
for me. I am a stronger person as a result of the heartaches that came
my way. I have no reason to hang my head in shame when I stand before
the cross.
It would seem that life isn't going to let me runaway from myself. I
have had no choice in this matter. It was either learn to understand,
and make some sense out of our past, or simply give up and let those
who hurt us win by default.
I leave you, precious child of God, with this thought,
Beauty often hides in heartache -- and heartache comes to us all.
Therefore, it isn't what is done to us that matters in this life --
What matters is what we do to others as a result of it.'
I look within myself to my sad lonely child. She smiles now. I have not
forgotten her. I kept my promise. And she has kept hers. She really is
the best part of who I am, and I am becoming the best part of who she
dreamed she could be.
I have earned her respect, and this sure feels like Heaven to me.
Imagine how beautiful the sunset looks through the eyes of a child that
once believed the world would be better off if she weren't standing on
it.
It's All Up to Me
Upon this Earth I stand today
remembering all my yesterdays.
We find Balance within ourselves
when we allow yesterday
to sit comfortably
with the reality of today.
Life is a series of reviews
we travel back and forth
between what was
and what is
always attempting to find some balance
within ourselves
between how we dreamed it would be
and the Reality
of how it turned out to be.
Upon this Earth I stand today
Forgiving myself
for the mistakes I made
Yesterday.
Within my power
What was...
What is...
What will be...
It's all up to me
Always,
Mary Carter
