What's Going On?

Make me wanna holler
-Marvin Gaye

I have abandoned the rest of yesterday's post. I realize now that I was using it as a way of distracting myself from what was going on inside me emotionally. For over a week now I have felt like I have been standing on quaking ground and trying my best not to loose my balance. Last night I realized that I have been trying to ignore these feelings because they are all too familiar to me. This is the way I felt throughout most of my childhood.

I felt this way when I was awakened by the sound of a deputy sheriff's boot kicking in the front door of our house while the person attached to that boot yelled," Sheriff's department! This is an eviction!"
I felt this way every time I stepped into a new school- and there were many. I count thirteen today but I think I am forgetting some of them.
I felt this way the night my brother woke us up by crashing though the front door of one house we lived in while screaming, "I'm shot! I'm shot!, as he fell to the floor.
I felt this way the night my parents came home late from a party and my father woke me up by yanking me out of bed with one hand while repeatedly hitting me forcefully on the butt with the other for not doing the dishes like he told me to do before he and my mother left the house. I was eight-years-old.
I'm sure there were other times that I felt the ground under my feet shake and my world collapsing. Although my mind may have forgotten them my body still remembers.

I have also felt great anger (bordering on the edge of rage) alternating with periods of sadness and fear. I read this over at Body and Soul and felt even worse. Jeanne linked to a story about poor people being rescued by a helicopter in New Orleans at first refusing to get on board because they were afraid they would be charged for the ride and there was no way they could afford it. She then linked to another blog that had a list of what being poor is like and asked people to add to the list. I started shaking as I read through it because I could have written so many of the entries myself.

Years ago I understood that I had many feeling still trapped inside my psyche. They were left over from days when I felt too afraid to express them or days when I was just overwhelmed by intensity of them. After a time I was carrying so many frozen feeling I felt numb all the time. When I decided to face the emotional and physical traumas of my past I thought that if talked about them I could free myself from them. What I didn't understand was that by letting go of the past I was allowing those frozen feeling to thaw. So anything that triggered a memory, consciously or unconscious, of the event that cause them would bring up that emotion as keenly as the day I first felt it.

I now understand that this is why I have identified so strongly with the people in New Orleans who were left behind. I know what it is like to have your world shattered in an instant through no fault of your own. I know what it is like to be poor and be treated like it's a lack of moral fiber on your part.

My anger is directed at the people in charge who failed the people of New Orleans. One thing I cannot abided is people responsible for the lives of others failing to do their duty. This government failed at so many levels it would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic. Some may say my anger is useless and self-indulgent but it is the only thing I have to give to the people of New Orleans that is really useful. Our collective anger is what will keep this from ever happening again.

"I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people."
-George W Bush