Please Don’t Give Up! (Part 2)

11/2/21

(For an explanation of who ‘Great Guy’ (GG) and Little Pearl (LP) are, please use the “Cast Of Characters” tab on the home page.)

Welcome Beautiful Person!

How has the last week gone for you?  Have you had to struggle at all with any of your hopes and dreams, or do you have enough faith to keep moving towards them even during times of struggle?

Today’s post is a continuation of last weeks (dated 10/26/21), so here we go . . .

A few days ago, a fourth person I care about and have a deep respect for passed away (within the last two months) and I, unfortunately (or not. Ahem.) misunderstood the funeral arrangements and missed it completely. 

One of the other funerals, which was about three or four weeks ago, was for the wife of a cousin (whom I never had to fear).  There was a good chance that the ring leader of the second era of childhood hell would be attending it and possibly some of the others involved.  

In the earlier morning hours of that Saturday I took my dog to the park to do the usual stair climbing and walking.  While exercising I was getting so distressed due to obsessively thinking about who all might be at the funeral, and kept wishing for a body guard (Great Guy preferably, of course) to go with me.

The post earlier in that week had alluded to something I had been wondering about, if GG had repeatedly done a specific action in the past to let me know he was around should I be able to reach out to him.   

On the day of the funeral there was someone at the park doing the same thing, but I couldn’t peer into the vehicle (nor through all those filters in my mind) to see if it was him.  And this is where – and how – hope, doubts and perhaps a different type of flashback collide for me.  I couldn’t figure out if it was just intense wishful thinking causing me to misinterpret a situation that had absolutely nothing to do with me.  It could have been a random person doing something similar and it was just a coincidence of how the vehicle was moving, situated, what was happening, etc.  

A (sort of) similar event occurred a couple of months before, a day or two after I went to see GG’s band play.  (As was written about in the post dated 8/10/21, “Triggers and Self Care Pt. 2”.  You may want to read it now if you haven’t already.)  I never wrote about an incident that happened later because it was just too fragile a hope, so I kept it hidden in my heart.   

When I was being triggered by the song, I was also thinking the message from it was personal. Along with the flashbacks, the tune was also dredging up some of the worst beliefs I had during those years of my life, and projecting them into the present.  I wondered if GG was telling me how much he really despised me and what he’d like to do if he was so inclined to be that sadistic and violent. 

So, I took flight.   

Over the next couple of days, after the psyche calmed down,  I tried to discern what happened in order to learn from it and, hopefully, be able to react differently should there ever be a similar experience.  Was trying to get a clearer perspective and figured I’d never get any type of clarification from GG if I asked via a message.  So the conclusion I came to (whether it really was his truth or not, I didn’t know) was that what I had hoped were positive actions on his part over time, including what happened at another show I went to, were just wishful imaginations.  It’s not like he’s ever given me a tangible, clear indication he cared like I did.  And if he had tried at those other times and I couldn’t respond immediately for trying to ‘see’ through all those damn filters in my mind, he would consider them ‘null and void’.

So imagine when, a couple days after that gig, I was at the park and noticed a man sitting at a picnic table, facing me.  I thought he looked like a member of GG’s band, J (who has a distinctive physical feature), but couldn’t let myself be sure.  When I acknowledged him in a generic way he responded then nodded in a subtle way towards something that would’ve been in back of me, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around what may or may not be happening. (Due to having convinced myself I was essentially a pox to J (if it was him) and GG.)  I walked to my car and while driving away, noticed there was a man that looked like Great Guy standing where J nodded towards.   

When hell was happening to me as a child, I would mentally escape by going into deep fantasies.  The most prominent one was imagining members of my favorite band coming to my rescue.   

(Of course I’m crying now.) 

Can you, Beautiful Person, understand why I couldn’t figure out, in their respective moments, what was actually happening in either of those situations I just described?  Can you tell if they were just a different form of ‘flashback’, where some of my most fervent hopes in the present could’ve been colliding with those so similar from the past, and if what I was seeing was just a form of projection of those old fantasies into the now?  Or could these hopes in my heart be actually manifesting into reality, in the present?   And why I never will know the truth without getting answers from the others involved?   

And why I beat the crap out of self, heart and mind every time something like that happens because I can’t discern it on my own without something tangible to hold on to?  And why I haven’t gone to another of GG’s shows knowing I could ‘take flight’ during one of their most requested songs, perhaps making scene or just an ass out of myself, again?  (Plus, let’s face it, I was never particularly confident he wanted me there before, and now? considering. what happened? Yikes!)

This post is long enough, I will finish this musing next week.  Until then, please keep reminding yourself that you are, in fact, beautiful, ok?  Because you are, and you deserve to KNOW it.

Also – my dog has a wounded paw and has been restricted – per the vet – to minimal walking/exercising. If you’re so inclined, would you PLEASE pray/send good wishes that he heals soon, before we both get any wider? (and drive each other crazy from the antsyness (?) that comes from not expanding physical energy constructively?) Thank you! 🙂

Today’s song is by Triumph.  It goes perfectly with the over all theme of these posts, and Bishop Jakes’ talk, “Internal Arguments:  It’s Worth the Fight”  which is linked at the top of the first of this trio of posts, on 10/26/21.  I read a little blurb about the tune “Fight the Good Fight”.  Rik Emmett, the person who wrote the lyrics, explains how he was inspired to write it.  I’ll (try to remember to) put that blurb under the screen for the video.  Hope the song inspires you, too, to keep goin’ even when you’re not sure why you would, but know you should.

• Triumph was the Canadian power trio of singer/guitarist Rik Emmett, bass player Mike Levine, and singer/drummer Gil Moore. “Fight The Good Fight” is a band composition with lyrics by Emmett, who was inspired by his aunt, who was dying of cancer. “What can you tell someone who is facing the last challenge of this life?” he said in a Songfacts interview. “Or – what will you tell yourself? If you’re in a rock band called Triumph, what message can you share with the people listening to a song on the radio, or standing on their chairs, out in an arena? Everyone gets to decide what their own ‘good’ fight will be, but everyone should be encouraged to discover it, and do it.”
• The themes of this song are resilience and persistence. Emmett says it’s about “finding a calling when things get bleak.”
• (Amen! – Pearl)