What keeps. Me wake and sleeping with the lights on
I. Am awake again
Uneasy dreams, memories that are hard to fade.
No place. To go besides work and home. When a moment appears a work call or email or text fill the void. It’s made quarantine productive if mot overwhelming so.
What keeps me awake with the lights on are dark memories that show up in my dreams and on awakening knowing I had lived through those events.
Childhood events
Turbulent teenage years that hurt my spirit
Not fitting in because I was smart, creative, my mother was a teacher at our school and I had glasses and braces and was not thin. Picked on an ridiculed. The year the whole class would not talk to me. Painful and not forgotten because of the stress of group dynamics surfacing at work.
I found my solace in art then. Did community projects and worked full time in high school and still graduated second in my class though I had skipped a grade back then. The challenges one faces in becoming an adult.
I went to engineering school, happy not to have to take classes like English grammar! How ironic that I. Am a writer!
The tough street smart teenager in a new environment. I found friends in creative others. We are still friends now. I survived a trauma that involved an event that scared me. It began doing homework to get ready for a party, sipping a beverage that turned into a three day blackout that included a hospital stay,date rape and it being labeled a suicide attempt. That would change my world. Freshman in college, just turned 17
Art and studies got me through and I actually completed all my degree requirements in the fall of my senior year as a Chemistry major, cheerleader, singer in the church folk group and the girls choir. I. Stayed awake nights with the lights on always.
In July 1983 I was hired in the Nuclear Medicine department as a radiopharmacy technician. We published many papers based on my long days of work.
High levels of radiation, I got a post in a immunology lab. I actually attended a lecture and met Dr Gallo who discovered AIDS. It was the pathology department where dying was the beginning of the process. It gave me the courage to look deep into things to find answers. I attended a class by Jon Kabatt Zinn about mindfulness.
I remember being in a lecture on Ebola and the news came in about the space shuttle disaster. I later felt. It was a metaphor for my life.I got engaged later that year. It threw my science career to the wind as I married and moved to Connecticut.
Science work was not available in Hartford. I worked. In a business and greeting card store. With my ex and his brother we opened a music rating business in 1987.Worked in a deli, opened an art studio in the Colt Gun Factory artist lofts. I opened my first business later helped friends bring Enviro Audit to success. So once again art and science gave me peace. We held parties that became the Spaghetti Social. Once again as my careers did well. The life changing decision; move to Greece. After the road trip cross country, we arrived in Athens in 1988.Village life I enjoyed. Living above the olive line and we could see the water. Eventually moving to Athens, learning Greek. I worked at ACS subbing in science, math and art. Then the textile factory, then opening Cindy’s Baking Cakes. My mom had a few bouts of cancer and left to heaven.The success and popularity and family led to a divorce that started in 1996.
The whirlwind years: hotel jobs,restaurants and two times living. In Texas. Museum job, sales and UPS and a herbal store and a factory in Greece. I had been attacked in a few instances over the years.Being alone, single and attractive brought attention. I almost stayed to never return to the USA.My father had a stroke and it took a few years of hard work to be able to go visit. I didn’t find anything but low paying jobs, I didn’t have the time or money. I went. To see him. He died a year later.
I remarried a man that loved me the most and hurt me the most. I found happiness and healing in art and the pursuit of Persian rugs. I had a galley and have had a consulting business since then. I. made it through and in 2010 felt on top of the world.
I finished my MBA , the ten year difficult marriage ended, and I moved to Coronado. I took the ferry to work lived in a community where I finally felt I belonged.
I got a position in a research project which I loved. Our group published articles and the like it was at the Naval Hospital.
Then a series of events turned my world around. The project ended, a love connection threatened my life, I had to move, and gave. Away or sold 90% of my belongings. I even had to put my beloved cat to sleep. The upheaval kept me awake with lights on!
I work seven. Days a week: in Webdesign, Flooring design. Persian rugs and writing.Finally getting out from the burden. Last year some one broke into my car, I have been bullied . I have been. Ridiculed. I have been fat shamed. I am under much pressure and stress I have. Lupus.I am publishing my rug book and working on my next.
Why is it that my success at this time seems To get people jealous? I have lived many lives already . This time I will not give up!Now you know why I stay awake and sleep with the lights on!