Shadows
Opaque surface rejects light
If the surface is moving
Dancing takes place
Shadows
Lingering in what was
Because the surface has not moved on
Stuck in a vacuum, never ending light
Shadows
The, I of what use to be
Memories of a time
Sillhoutes trapped in the mind
Shadows
The dust of incense
Dying embers within
Collect on the ground
No-where bound
I drop tears every day. Over loss, grief and difficulty adopting to a new life without a mother to run to. I drop tears every day. Over not enjoying the hobbies culminated during Covid. I drop tears every day. Over not having family, being alone with no emergency contacts close by. I drop tears every day. Over the person who once was me filled with purpose, goals and drive. I drop tears every day. Over dying alone in a hospital or nursing home.
The movie, “Wit”caused trauma and profoundly solidified, how I’ll draw my last breath. Alone, with a terminal disease, in hospice and only a nurse by my bedside. The same scenario happened to my cousin who was born on the east and died in the west. I’d like to think you, my mom, will be waiting for me as I depart. Cooing words of love and singing, “You are my sunshine”. You watched me come into the world; I watched you go out.
I live to eat and not eat to live. I live to be and be to live. I live to please and please to live. I live to explore and explore to live. I live to live.
Memories are warm, snuggly like drinking a humongous mug of hot chocolate-milk not water and topped with gobs of whipped cream-no marsh mellows. I can laugh at our silliness over gin and tonics and smile over the hair always found in your food. I remember once your hair ended up in my mouth and I threw a fit as there were no tomorrows on the horizon. You swore apologies while the sun shined and refusing to accept them gave me power. Later that day, a thought emerged. One day I would long for your hair in my food.
A visit to the local emergency room on a Wednesday night was not expected or wanted.
An earlier evening dental appointment where vitals were taken exposed a blood pressure and pulse reading that concerned the dentist and his assistant. Needless to say, it didn’t concern me as I started new anti-depression meds and was not exactly adherent to the ‘do not drink alcohol” label on the bottle.
But…
I did not drink prior to the dental. After the appointment, I went home, swallowed the pizza I bought on the way and fed the furs. That lil’ voice in the head, often ignored, nudged me to check my blood pressure.
165/110 pulse 119!!!
Ok…
Got in a neighbourhood cab and $9 later sat in the emergency room at Methodist waiting for a doctor.
After two hours of sitting on a plastic grey chair that once may have been blue; playing Candy Crush while observing the homeless woman across from me sleeping, snoring, hunger rumble from her belly, I was called in.
EKG/Blood Pressure monitoring and pulses oximeter.
My vitals were taken by a Haitian nurse who bragged about her scholarly accomplishments and frowned at my taking anti-depression meds. I was brought into the er amidst the beeping of vital machines, moaning, cursing, frazzled nurses, complacent doctors, and human congestion of the rush hour automobile kind.
Waiting and observing brought back the memory of numerous hours spent with mom, my mom in this same space. She was in hospice care at home but would frequent the er when her draining tube dislodged.
Anxiety, severe depression with the strongest need to scream.
My mom gave up her mental fight during the last visit to this er. Defeated over additional testing, she started to cry. There was no end to the treatments which brought no healing. A return to normalcy was not in her future. I sit with myself in bright fluorescent lights trying to block the memories. I felt so helpless then as I do now alone in sterile coldness, which only exacerbates the fragility of mí alma (my soul).
Nothing compares…
With high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate I was an outsider in the emergency room.
I was an outsider inside a large room where homelessness mixed in and cememented with mental health issues. Mind you, I do have the mental health stuff but I’m also “medically managed” * for it.
Others are not.
In the er, some were going through psychosis, strapped to their beds with heartless security guards sitting nearby. The er that night was a mental health facility over run by those seeking shelter from a cold/foodless night on the outside.
This city, NYC, treats homelessness as the black elephant in the room whom city officials would love to sweep in the sewer.
I applaud all the healthcare workers there that night who did their rounds and interacted to the best of their abilities with the fragile mental humans in front of them.
*my primary care physician’s words
Brain in spasms
Thoughts bouNcinG on the membrane,
bOunCing off the membrane
BoUnCiNg…
Walked outside looked up
Clouds
Bouncing stopped
Restored, reset
I begin my morning
Confusing and self-doubt
Exploring possibilities
relocation, restoration, resurrection
Water, liquid water
Across the Hudson
Clouds
Confusion now clarity
Self-doubt now security
I begin my afternoon
Shit waits for no one
It passes you by
It rolls on forever
Like the clouds in the sky*
Shit happens
Clouds
Sometimes it’s good
Most times it’s bad
I begin my evening
Spasms
Thoughts bouNcinG on the brain
bOunCing off the membrane
BoUnCiNg…
Walked outside looked up
Clouds
Evening turns to night
Depleted mi alma drained
To bed hibernate
*Helen Forrest
MY MOOD
starts fresh each day
Waking up hopeful and open to the world
MY MOOD
is not like the rhythmn of the four seasons
Changing routinely, overlapping rudely, not blending in softly
MY MOOD
is prone to stagnate and fester
Going this way and that, bloated with urine
MY MOOD
at most is solitary
Moving through brown the dirt-Alone
MY MOOD
is glorious, proud, ever expanding
Exploring, born again from experiences encounter
MY MOOD
is comprised of tributaries, waterfalls, rivers, and streams
Flowing forth, clogging up, backing up, stuck then free, stuck
MY MOOD
supports others giving, giving and giving
They blossom, while I am stunted and deprived
MY MOOD
absorbs negativity literally
Which entraps and degrades until…
… the negativity has been cut away
my roots exposed, naked and afraid
MY MOOD
will continue forward
Towards the water, towards newness, towards growth
***All photos by EMcCalla
August 3, 2019 -5:23AM
“I think we all struggle with that unreasonable guilt, E***a, and it is unreasonable, isn’t it? Certainly, my Dad who loved me so well my entire life would want me to live whole and free, right? Of course, he would. It’s just all part of this gut-wrenching process we all have to suffer through. Be thankful for those sparks. Fan them into flame. Live that life to honor your loved one but more so for yourself and the world who needs your particular gifts.”
-Response to a post I wrote on a grief board
Grief amidst a worldwide pandemic mixed in with addiction is not pretty in any colour.
But the body and mind can longer accept alcoholic as self-medication to make the world seem right. Grief chased down with bourbon needs to rise up and be dealt with.
So, I …
Hang on for a day
The past is acknowledged, the future not ruminated on. The present? Front, Center and Back. Because that is all that matters.
Hang on for another day
“An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature”-Big Book
Finished the twelfth steps, now what?
Hang on
The desire to run, do a gym work out, bang on the piano or even write has faded for Anger and Hangovers no longer fuel, mi alma (soul).
Hang on for yet another day
Sobriety dulled my creativity or rather my creativity refuses to emerge through a clear thinking alma (soul).
Hang on for a day
I have yet to print out those medical records, afraid of what may be revealed, afraid I’ll gain more truths into my inadequacies fueled by alcohol into how I was not there for you-figuratively.
Still hanging on
Have not attempted to finish my piece on “One year without you” for one year has now turned into three years without you.
August 30, 2019 -12:10PM
“Hang tight-you will fly once your wings unfold. You will find a place either in this realm or another where you are loved & appreciated for being just you with all your quirky talents, flowing forth like glitter. Be Strong!”
-Note from me to me
At the age of 56, last night on a Zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’ I was called a nigger.
‘Elena is a nigger’ is what someone wrote on their screen at the AA Zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’
Interesting fact, I guess.
Can’t say that I didn’t already know I was a nigger. Knew from the age of 11 when an Italian classmate enlighten me at the Italian/Irish Catholic school.
But an AA meeting?
A Zoom meeting not password protected nor protected with adequate bouncers to monitor the room? An AA meeting where sobriety is sacred and protected at all cost?
Not when you’re a nigger.
So last night during an AA zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’ someone called me a nigger.
Society has been using nigger from the time of slavery or even beyond and I’ve been privileged to hear it all through my days on this earth. Although, I stopped hearing it in my 40’s. I guess those people knew better to call a nigger a nigger especially in the workplace, in church, not on the subways though or on the street.
Nigger/Nigga
I heard the rappers take it and turn it into our own. No longer nigger but nigga. How quaint, how eloquent, how ballsy to take what They branded us and turn it into our own brand that They do not hesitate to use, to be cool, to be hip, to be damn bloody fools in my worldly view. But as Jay Z says during the Ballad of OJ, “Still Nigga”.
Being called a nigger in your 50’s hurts just like it did at 11.
I ain’t your nigger though I may be a nigga, but being a nigga to me is not being a nigger to you and you best not call me a nigger to my face because after this bullshit on zoom I just may cut you deep, really deep but not with a knife as I see in my mind but with words that flow from the scarred vault that holds the many, many, niggers I was called by the ones I choose to call They.
How Fate looks like. What Fate looks like to me.
What Tara-Habby looks like. What Tara-Habby truly is.
What Winnie looks like. What Winnie looks like to me.
Who Big E thinks he is. Who Big E is.
Who Katie thinks she is. Who Katie really is.
How I think my furs see me. How they really see me
.
I am getting to the point where retirement is looking damn so good so good
But…
Don’t have that Big Fat Retirement pension coming my way,
(that’s what happens when you move from job to job)
as it’s always been hard to stay at one job for too long.
(you say that now, but that’s not what you thought while you were moving about)
I get bored, not because I’m boring but spending 35-40 hours a week with some co workers you’d never hang out with on your day off is boring.
(having your own business for 15 years can do that to you)
And there are those with positions of power who wave their condescending and micromanaging wands of glory directed towards 
(I treated my assistants with respect and appreciation and was in awe I could hire them)
bursting a tiny bubble, well actually Big Bubbles of ideas and hopes and inspirations,
(creative people are a bit off their rockers and can get carried away with ideas…)
into shards of Papyrus paper needed for input into the databases of an excel spreadsheet that personifies an aged metal filing cabinet that
(pushing papers is basically water torture to those who have so much more to give)
is bent on being resistant to assault and fondling,
(as the creativity dies instead of glowing and rising through adversity)
I give up and give in. Nothing left to prove. The only proof needed to verify the my gifts earned through life is the proof HE and I alone share.
(Peace out to those who love being obstacles in another’s path. Your insecurities will eventually rot out your core.) 
***images courtesy of the WWW, just because…
Anélemc's Writing 
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