Revealed Truth on the Road to Raton 123?

The Palisades in afternoon light

Truth is where you find it. It can be in a book or a movie or a short scene from television episode. Or, quite frankly, for me in alone time on the road to Raton. Or maybe the road to Raton is just the processing time I need; the pause to meditate on the signs showing up in my life.

There was this StarTrek episode with Harvey Fenton Mudd as a pimp for women to be wives of miners on a far and distant planet, Mudd's Women. He gives the women pills to transform them into goddesses and it turns out it is really an inside job. How we perceive ourselves is so much a part of how others perceive us. I first saw this show originally decades ago so it has been stashed in the back of my mind for a long time.

Yesterday it joined up with another scene from something I just watched in season four of Longmire. It dealt with a rape victim and how part of her was stolen and she needed to call it back to her to be whole. Nobody could do it for her. It isn't just rape which steals our essence. Abuse, verbal and physical, can do it too. Or just being misused by someone we thought was a friend. Bad marriages, sick friends, the wrong company can all rob us of our power. We can be less than we once were without even knowing it. Until alone on an empty highway driving to Raton.

I had this vision of myself as fat and old. Frankly, I was beginning to look like my mother entirely too much. I had always looked more like Dad. I love clothes and have entirely too many I have not worn lately because I look fatter in them. I was down to the favorite sweats and hoodies. And yet in the last month I have discovered my glad rags again, and ventured forth from my cave. I am always rather surprised when people remember me. I must be infinitely forgettable if I cannot remember who I am.

I am not sure there is a direct or indirect cause and effect but in a little less than four weeks I have lost eight pounds. Last night I dug down in the dress jeans that did not fit ,slated to go to the thrift shop, and pulled out an old favorite. They fit. I also unearthed from the bottom of the closet boots I once loved and forgot. And my power jewelry. I have often thought the pieces I have made or bought from jewelers were talismans which held power for me. When I felt powerless I hid them in boxes.

I am not sure the process is over yet but it has begun.