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Just my opinions and outlook on life |
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The end of 2020 The very first entry I made for The Writer’s Cramp was my best. It tied for the win and I was happy about that but it really made no difference to me. It was a poem written after Thanksgiving about my own recovery from addiction. That was 26 years ago and it totally changed my life. I checked myself into Drug Rehabilitation when I first realized that I might have a problem with substance abuse. I had no idea what changes that one incident would make in my life. When I was discharged, I had a lot of major decisions to make and the poem spoke to how conflicted I still was. The prompt was Closely Watched Trains. It was easy to take that one and run with it. After all, trains take you places and where you go can change your life forever. My journey had just begun. Closely Watched Trains I stand alone in blinding rain, waiting on an unknown train. My future life, a choice to make. Only one I can take. Two tickets lay in my hand, don’t know where to stand. One path leads to a familiar past. Comfort once lost; now peace might last. The other takes me far away. Unknown future, a bright new day? Strangers can become friends. A new life, old wounds can mend. Last time I waited on a train, a filthy walkway, urine stains. Crying frightened, shameful tears, burdened with pain, unknown fears. The smut on me wouldn’t wash away. In pores so deep, I had to stay. If I hung in, worked the steps. A cluttered mess might bring rest. Been running too long and fast, towards a certain fatal crash. Smoke the gin, drink the powder, Alice of Wonderland in troubled water. I did hard work, washed my stains. Princess in a castle, I glow, no shame. I found answers for all asked of me, climbed the Magic Beanstalk tree. Now, I wait on my wish filled train. I pray a light shines true in dark rain. God, I have come a long, long way. I need to love myself enough to stay. By Kathie Stehr 11/27/2020 Learning to love myself enough to make necessary decisions was the key to future happiness. If you don’t love yourself enough then you cannot love other important people in your life. I left a marriage that I knew was over after twenty years. We had two children together and were happy for many years so it was devastating to even think about starting over. Our lives had changed so much over those years. Now, instead of working together, we were destroying our lives and it was affecting the kids. I also ended up leaving my job as a registered nurse because the stress of all of it: the marriage, the job and no time for my children was taking a terrible toll. I had been diagnosed with a neurological disease that was painful and hard to deal with for me and my family. The final straw was taking medication for the symptoms and making the potentially harmful mistake of mixing it with alcohol. Thankfully I only did this when I wasn't working but if I had continued, I would have made mistakes at work and could have hurt or killed someone. Working with the hospital, I tried different areas to go back to work but could not physically do it. I applied for and got on the hospital's disability benefit. This step began a whole new way to live an even better life. I helped with the national organization for dystonia, became a support group leader, I also was a motivational speaker that traveled the country to talk at our national symposiums with physicians and scientists. It was a different way of being a nurse/caretaker by taking caring of me first then other people who needed information and guidance. I loved meeting the people and the symptoms, that I was trying to cover up at work, showed others I was just like them. I could give them hope. I remarried, in time, to a man who loves me and helped me with my volunteer work. He has been by my side for surgeries and many painful procedures. Of course, I have reciprocated for him but it is hard to deal with a partner with physical disabilities. We have been together for over twenty-five years and have a large combined family who love each other. I will be 68 in 2021 and we are enjoying a more laid back retired life. All of us should constantly take an inventory of our lives. How are we living them? Are we serving ourselves or others? I believe we are put on this Earth to help others and we must be willing and honest to do that. I follow the principles of AA and NA and it hasn't let me down. It is progress not perfection, like a marriage. If you make a mistake, you own it and begin again. I hope any future entries I make are as true to my convictions as this one was. Fiction is fine and I enjoy it. All writing comes from the inner well of wisdom that says so much about its’ author. I try to end all my writing on an optimistic note. I want to grow in my writing, sometimes I touch my inner feelings more than others and this was one that did. It was a great prompt. 2020 has been a very hard year for more people than I can ever remember. There are so many people out there that are ill, have lost someone they love, can't feed their families and are falling into the darkness of addiction. I pray for all of them and do what I can. I wish for the judges and all the people that belong to Writing.com that they are at peace within themselves and bring more joy to this planet than they take from it. I know I have to make that choice every day, to spread love and remain sober. I wish you all a happy new year, may it be a much better year for all. Thanks for letting me be a part of this family. Kathie Stehr December 31, 2020 ** Image ID #2267445 Unavailable ** |
| We've all heard of people who mysteriously 'go missing'. Tonight, write about a person who 'goes missing'. Someone that you read about in the newspaper or online, but nobody seems to know them, or remember them. The following story was truly the end of innocence for me. It happened 2 days before my 12th birthday (October 14, 1965) and in my city. It happened at Lenox Square, an almost new shopping mall in the upscale Buckhead district. People went there to browse in exclusive shops and eat in nice restaurants. It was well-lit, and even at night it was usually full of people. My Mom had just started working there at Rich’s department store and we used to eat at the S&S cafeteria where Mary Shotwell Little often ate lunch. When I was 16, I started working at Rich's also and I can remember thinking about Mary as I walked alone at 9 or 10pm through the covered parking to my car. Mary was 25, an attractive hard-working secretary at the C&S Bank on Mitchell Street downtown who had been married to a bank examiner only six weeks. She was close to her family and had no enemies. And she was last seen in one of the safest public places in Atlanta. She vanished in an autumn haze of tantalizing clues: flowers from a secret admirer, a bloody car that allegedly had been moved in broad daylight, papers signed after her disappearance. Little even left a trail, stretching hundreds of miles into another state. And with all these clues, sifted and re-sifted by an army of investigators, nobody ever learned what happened to her. It was the strangest disappearance in the history of the city. It frightened the public, embarrassed the politicians, baffled the best investigators. And it left the young woman’s loved ones broken-hearted. The sensational mysterious story was on the local news every night, also on each of the three major public news broadcast in America. Every new clue was spoken about. Police and FBI agents always held to their initial hunch, that Little had been kidnapped and murdered. But they never found a body, never focused on a strong suspect, and most vexing of all, never came up with a coherent theory of what had happened. Conspiracies normally follow a pattern, and so do crimes of opportunity and crimes of passion. But the Little disappearance seemed to defy such rules of logic. It was in a class by itself. A month after the disappearance, investigators got a lead that they expected to break the case wide open, but that instead led them to one of the strangest dead ends they had ever encountered. They learned that Little's gasoline credit card had been used in North Carolina. According to records of an all-night gas station in Charlotte, Little's card had been used in the early morning of Oct. 15, just a few hours after she was last seen at Lenox Square. And the receipt bore what appeared to be her signature. And several hours later, in the late afternoon of the 15th, in Raleigh, the same card had been used again. The same signature was on it, and comparisons indicated it was hers. The disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little became a part of Atlanta folklore. Every few years there would be a bogus lead, sparked more by the media than by police, and the strange story would be rehashed, but the lead would turn out to be a hoax or the product of an overactive imagination. Barring a deathbed confession or an accidental discovery, it is unlikely that Little's disappearance will ever be solved. The people who investigated the case are long retired, and many, like the main investigator Perry, are dead. So are many of Little's friends and relatives. As time goes on, her name will become more legendary, but it will arouse painful recollections in fewer and fewer people. Memories will fade, and only the media clips will remain. On the Facebook page for "If you remember the Atlanta from 40 Years Ago..." , the case is often brought up. But what of the vast police file on the case, one that filled a huge box? It met the same fate as Mary Shotwell Little. It’s been missing for years. |
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