The Monsters

    Even the monsters around us have some saving grace.  Everyone has issues, most people have craziness.  If you happen to hit one of their panic buttons, it's best to run, but if you can't, you're stuck hearing or witnessing the worst that person can generate.  Sure there is something wrong with them, but there is something wrong with every human being you will ever meet.  You just don't see it in most.  We learn, sooner or later, to act however normal looks to us.  If we can't appear normal, it may seem we don't care, but look closely, we care a lot!  We are the murderers, the druggies, the depressed person staying at home, the weird boss or most obnoxious person you ever met.  Nobody wants to be that person. 

   If we're lucky, we get counselling.  If we hit the jackpot, we get at least five years of therapy with the same good therapist.  That is almost unheard of and it's a shame.  Psychologists and Social Workers graduated from college and graduate school in the 1970s and 80's by the dozen and were shunted into low-paying caretaker jobs.  Even when insurance was forced to treat emotional problems the same way as physical ones, the jobs were bad.  A PhD could give a psych worker a start, but not more.

  When we moved down to Delaware from Philadelphia, we were entranced by the trees, the cleaner air, the space!  We thought we moved to Mayberry.  That was before one of the neighbors in the development decided what we should and could do.  That became about nine years of feuding and eventually went to attorneys.  I had never seen people go to such great lengths and I could not be sure if it was anti-Semitism,  lack of self-worth, assumption we were middle class and therefore elite?  I occasionally see those people, always with hate on their faces, or smarmy laughter.  

  On the outside, those folks are "normal".  People easily "pass".  So, instead of seeking help, they live their entire lives holding grudges and blaming other people for whatever they feel inside them.  Delaware is more conforming than Philadelphia.  Of course.  Philly is a big city, and the residents are more tolerant of difference.  It depends.  My Philly neighbor, who I loved, couldn't understand why I would want a tree on my lawn.  

  Now, in Delaware, I have a big Magnolia and lots of other trees.  I love them.  I love our house, my garden in the back, and living here.  Our kids worry because they aren't close by.  Our daughter, a nurse, saved my husband's life this year when his rehab wasn't going to send him to the hospital.  He needed blood and surgery.  I can't see staying here as we advance to the old old.  I plan to flee to our daughter's.  I'm under no fantasy that I can live alone.  Nevertheless, every tree, those I planted and those here long before the houses, brings me joyful energy.  Because of that set of horrible people, I was forced to confront my own acting out  and fear.  I'm sorry I upset them, regardless of their own feeling of being completely innocent. Nobody is innocent in an out of control feud.  I wish them sanity and more.  I'm not blessing them; they're dangerous.  I'm just hoping they, and everybody LIKE them, begins to look inward and realizes color, education, and religion don't make us DIFFERENT.  We all want to connect.  It's in our nature.  Prejudice can be unlearned.

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