An antenna that never captured the news

I have been a broken antenna, ever attuned to the weak signals from my ex-partner.  To other important women in my life.

 

Another image would be the ears of a horse…or a cat…always rotating to indicate the direction of highest interest.

 

Cats and horses notice everything.  My ears don't rotate, and my antenna has been too alert, but faulty. 

 

I learned to listen for every nuanced signal, of course, from infancy…as we all did.  Some of us were cut off early and learned to do without.  I started pre-natal, and I'm still doing it 69 years later. 

 

I know that this kind of outward focused listening device is inappropriate for an adult.  I know that now.  It was a behavior that got me the attention and praise and love and acknowledgement I desired at age 4.  It probably stopped working by age 5.  And it certainly did me no favors by the time I met my ex at age 39.  I listened incorrectly, heard the wrong signals, and tuned out to my own needs and hopes entirely.

 

I lived that way until 2012 when it crashed and I became traumatized, but given the opportunity to crawl back into the radio frequency of the womb, I happily climbed back in to "Radio Nowhere." I ignored direct advice from friends and family I value (and less direct counsel from my therapist) and returned to my ruptured unbalanced marriage. Is there any body alive out there?

 

And then I learned we had crashed again in 2022, and finally in 2023. 

 

2024 is ending but my broken and bent antenna is still looking for women to interpret and please, and it's still disconnected from the most important broadcaster—me. 

I am the most important broadcaster there is, now that I live in a dry place, with no love, and a daily diet fraught with loneliness and despair.  I have my cat and some horses to show me how to observe and listen in ways that I've never attempted.  To make my ears, and eyes, and heart resonate and attune (I think I've lost much of my sense of smell as part of the COVID experience and perhaps because of anti-depression medication).

 

To hear and listen deeply, and thereby learn better truths about myself and what I need to be whole.  To be rich.  To love myself.  To perhaps care for others more than I ever have.  Not because I didn't care, but because I couldn't hear and see what was before me.  I made so many mistakes because I was not the best antenna I hoped to be, and I didn't have sympathy for the 4 year old boy who learned all this in the first place, and hasn't had a rest or a vacation since. 

 

Now's the time.  I'm listening.  I'm noticing.  I stop moving when I sense a lack of trust.  Or honesty.  And I wait and learn, until I observe something calling me forward.  This is the most powerful lesson ever in patient observation.  I am a new student.