TODAY IS A DAY OF CONFUSION

I cannot stop shaking my head. I truly

do not understand. Recently my beautiful

Muse Family conducted a voting poll. The vote was for "Lin To Remain Lin."

I think this came about because I write long, sometimes, excessively long e-mails.

My son runs the other way

if he gets a letter in the mail from me because he knows it is going to take him a good half hour to read my ramblings. He started running when he as a teenager. He'll be 37 in April. Yeah, he's been ducking me for a long time.

My daughter teases me that I do not know how to write anything not a

mini-novel. And she's right. I have this habit of beginning a note with a specific subject in mind, but as I am writing, other thoughts,

nuggets of information, tripping

down memory lane take over and off I go. I somehow always manage to come back to the main topic and

tie it up, but

pages and pages and pages later.

So my

long-winded letter writing and the

voting to keep me being me, came out of that.

That is one area that has me confused. There is another. Many have said that I am

the core of the

Muse family...and that I REALLY don't get.

Lea and

Litsa, they are the core. I am just the avid cheer...not leader, but













rally person.













I am so blessed to be at Muse and share it with my deeply loved Daughter.

For so long we hid out of fear...not a pleasant way to live, but you get used to it...especially when you have no choice.

A few times, after

the reconstructive surgeries gave me back enough

normalcy to

face the world, I tried to cultivate friendships with the mothers of my children's friends. 

Sex

was the very last thing on my mind. I seriously doubted back then I'd ever let another man near me...the surgeries only fixed so much.

A whip does do a LOT of damage. 

I wanted friendships

with the wives, unfortunately even through my

forties I was being mistaken for my twenty something year old and my 

son's girlfriend. This gave the dads of my children's friends

ideas, and scared the mothers enough they didn't just ban me, they

banned my children.

So for me,

hiding also meant giving my children an opportunity to have

friends that wouldn't be forced out of their lives because of Mom. 

I buried myself in

college, work, and

loving my beautiful

gifts from God. I hid.

I let no one in. Didn't dare. My children were far more important than hoping to develop friendships. 





When Kat was in her very early twenties, she was engaged to a man in

Texas, and three months before their

wedding was to take place, she

flew out. For the first time in my life, I was

alone. My son had moved out long before this, and now it was just our cat, a cantankerous half 

Siamese and me. 

Sea Mist, named because of her coloring, allowed me to come and go with a disdainful flick of her head, and it was a strange time. So what did I do with my new found solitariness? I'd go to work,

teaching, stop at the grocery store for a TV dinner...



honey mustard chicken...come home, step into a shower, don

a flowing caftan...my days of wearing the skimpy clothes my ex demanded I wear, were LONG over, eat, 

grade papers, make certain I had everything I'd need to teach the next day...(I made most of my teaching materials from scratch.)...then curl up with a book until I'd pass out. 

I still hid. You develop a veneer to survive the kinds of things I had to endure during my marriage...they call it

 disassociation. It's a valuable defense mechanism against the emotional fracturing years of abuse can wreck...but once you've developed it, it is really hard to delete it from your memory.


For reasons that are not mine to tell, my daughter's marriage never took place, and she returned.


We have shared our lives together ever since. She has been the only person I have allowed inside, and I am the only person she has allowed inside...

until we came to Muse.








When Lea did not rescind

my contract on April 1st, four days after proffering it, something inside me

cracked, just a little. In the days that followed that crack, like a crack in your

windshield, spread out. Litsa  joined Lea in helping that crack continue to spread.

Ginger, Heather, Jim, Nancy,

Karen McG,

Kevin,









Kay Dee, Larion, Brad, Roseanne, Chastity,

Chrystalla,



Christine L. and Chris S., Mike A. and his lovely wife, Cynthia,  Barbara E. and Barbara B., L.K., Viviane, Sara D..Jo P., Rosalie S., Arlene W., Charlie, Rhobin, Sue P., Marsha, Janie, Rebecca, Erika, Suzanne D., Krista D., Lisabet, Arlene...I know there are more and ask your forgiveness for my mind's stubbornness.

You all opened every last vestige of that

cocoon of solitude and acceptance. You gave Kat and I what we hadn't dared ever hope to have...family.

I had no choice but to cut us off from all contact with everyone...for their own safety and ours. We truly were, alone, until Lea

pinged

my shields and the rest of you followed her on in.

Today there are more...allegedly newbies to the

Muse family, but they have quickly stepped into the core of family that have embraced Kat and me...

Karen C.,

Rochelle, Jerry R., Kay M., Randall. and I thank and love every one of you.




You have given Kat and me more than you will ever know...but we are so NOT

the core of anything...

Lea is.

Lea,

Litsa,

and Dee, our amazing editors, and many more of our cherished friends.