Trust the process

A couple of weeks ago, I started watching the 'Texas Killing Fields,' a documentary about a series of murders that took place in Leake City over a 35-40 year period.  Two of the women's bodies were found in the mid 1980s, not long after my dad was stationed at Fort Hood and we moved to Coopers Cove (pronounced Copper's Cove, which I have never quite understood). 

I arrived in Texas 2.5 months after my parents left, my first flight by myself from Cincinnati to Dallas (except I ended up in Houston, because they put me on the wrong plane).   School started in early August and we lived close enough that I could walk, which I did most days. There were enough children going in the same direction that walking to school didn't feel like a risk. 

 There was a convenience store at the entrance to our neighbourhood, about a 15-minute walk away and I would sometimes walk there after school, with permission, though by October, my mom was apprehensive about me walking anywhere on my own. All of the parents were. I didn't understand why, fully. I knew that people went missing.

One late afternoon, we had run out of milk, so I decided to walk to the shop. My mom wasn't home. I forgot to leave a note.  I wasn't gone long, but Mama got home to an empty house. She found me at the corner store and her frantic energy came off angry. 'Where were you?!' Now, I can recognise the terror under what appeared to be anger, the fear of not knowing where I was, when I wasn't where I was expected to be. 

And now, I recognise that that fear was doubled by what would have been seemingly endless coverage on the local news of another body found, another woman, another girl gone missing.  I thought about this last week, about how fortunate I am to know where my dead child is, to know how my child died.  That ability to have answers and closure...it makes a tremendous difference. It doesn't take away the sting or heartache of loss but it also means I can rest easier at night because I know.  

One of the suspects (I'm only halfway through the second episode of the documentary) was called the "Casanova Conman in Cowboy Boot." He reminds me of so many choices I have made, that other women I know have made. And how fortunate we are that we have gotten out of those situations alive and relatively intact. 

 'He considered himself a ladies man.'

'He 'happened' to run into my mother.'

'Why do you say it like that?'

'Because that was his plan.' 

It was disturbing, the shiver of apprehension and recognition that crept along my spine at that exchange, remember both the old school and the cyber stalkers I've engaged with (either my own or other people's).  The more I learn about somatic and nervous system responses, the more I know that the body can't distinguish between types of arousal, the systems only know they are hyper- stimulated. When I factor into where patterning and familiarity come into play further down the line, in interpersonal relationship dynamics, I really have had to pull back and examine how I engage with people and develop  relationships, how the rules and dynamics shift and change, both internally and in external spaces. 

After the few days I spent with Ebonie Allard in Spain, something shifted. I can't quite explain the shift completely yet other than I am betting on myself, but it starts with my prioritising immediate needs and staggering the hard-to must-dos in to feasible acheivables. I mean, all of my acheivables (with the exceptions of the really insane one, like not listening to my intuition, or obsessing over the dangerous, the destructive. Lingering too long in dark alleys, unintentionally staying too long at parties I never wanted to be at, etc., etc.). My sleep is better, even if the schedule is a bit wonky; I'm slowly coming out of what I have decided is less a depressive fug and more my seasonal 'standby/conservation mode.' And I am full of cold/bronchial grossness, to such a degree, I've actually rescheduled work to give myself time to fully recover and rest. It's a learning curve, taking this kind of time.