Pamela Leavey

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Category: Creative Writing

Letting Go or Holding On: Part Two

Letting Go and Holding On is a four-part short memoir essay, which is part of a larger creative non-fiction project that I am working on…

Part Two:

So there I was, unpacking all of these fancy dresses and wondering why was I still hanging on to them. Chances are at this point in my life, living in a small coastal town on the north shore of Massachusetts, I was never going to have the need to wear one again. And then there was my daughter Juliet, I could always use her as an excuse to hang on to those dresses. Yes, I thought, “She might wear them someday. She likes vintage clothing.”

The thought of paring down my closet comingles with the thought of paring down my body. I hang on stubbornly, wishing I were forty—forty-five years old again; even fifty would do, still rocking those tight little black dresses and spike heels at the blues bar on Saturday nights. Who was that woman, I ask myself now. “She feels like she was some styling soul sister,” I respond to myself, “She was not my self. No she was just a facet of me back in the day.” In truth, I had begun to separate from that self, a few years before I left Los Angeles, but part of me still hangs on to her clothes now, secretly hoping I can slip into a little black dress and head down to the local blues bar for a Saturday night of good times and good tunes. I have a hard time letting go of things. My memories of these times gone by both haunt and amuse me.

A trip down memory lane, a night out in the blues club, grooving to straight-up, white hot road musicians who regularly toured with the likes of Bonnie Raitt and others. Yes, that was I, in my other life sometime in the 1990’s on the left coast. I rocked my little black dresses and spike heels with my platinum blonde buzz cut. I fit in in there that eclectic city of angels. I was even consider more normal than eclectic there in L.A., unlike here at home where I am a bit avant-garde in my attitude and tastes.

“Look at me now I think,” my hair is long and au natural, in multi-colored streaks of gray, blonde and brown. In fact, my hair is so long that it falls a few inches below my shoulders, the longest it has ever been in my life. He liked my hair long. Somehow, I felt as though I let my hair grow with the instinctual knowledge that he would consume himself in it one day. Yes, it was that sort of connection that we had. I knew the hair would pull him in. And it did. A year and half had gone by from the last time we had seen each other and all he could say was “your hair… please don’t cut your hair.” “I won’t,” I told him.

Stay tuned for Part Three

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Letting Go or Holding On: Part One

Letting Go and Holding On is a four-part short memoir essay, which is part of a larger creative non-fiction project that I am working on…

Part One:

From time to time, I have a hard time with letting go of things. Clothes, books, and rocks top my list. My mother’s bedroom set has crossed country at least a half dozen times, it is bound together with nails and wood glue, too dear to me to let go of. There is most recently, my father’s battered and torn Persian rug that the cat peed on a few months ago, I cannot bear to part with it despite the fact that the smell lingers.  These are among the things I have a hard time letting go of, these things, and men.

Yes, these are all things that I tend to hold on to. Did I say men? Oh yes, I did. Men or at this point in time, one man in particular. I have been having a tough time letting go of the illusion of something more with this one. Maybe that is because I am still single and long for a special someone in my life, or maybe that is why I am still single at fifty-eight years old. Because, I hang on to the hope of a man I cannot have. Because, I hang on to the hope of a relationship with a man who is unavailable and not worth my misplaced desire.

These are the things I think of. Fifty-eight and single. Living alone and loving it. Well, loving it until the occasional loneliness sets in. The kind of loneliness that causes me to occasionally hold on to men, men who are not worth my time. I entrust the object of my illogical affections with a string of justifications of why they are still worthy of my reveries, despite the fact that I should have long let go. Never the less, I am drawn to what I cannot have and I am driven, still despite my age, because I am not sure age diminishes the desire for communion with another.

I just moved a few weeks ago and I hauled with me all of this stuff that I have carted about for the past seven years since I moved back east from Los Angeles. First, there were all the dresses that I packed and unpacked again, and squeezed into my closet hoping I would one day squeeze it to them again. “Good luck with that,” I thought to myself. I was almost there, they almost fit a year ago and then I quit smoking on Christmas day. Sugar had become my best friend. But that is different story.

Stay tuned

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My Writing Life: Little Red Pays a Visit

I was hoping my move to the river a few weeks ago would provide me for good inspiration for my writing. It has taken me sometime to settle in to my new place and that has been a distraction from school, and of course my writing. The inspiration is starting to kick in, I am happy to say.

Writing has been my life and I’ve never fulfilled writing what I really wanted to write about so I am working on that now while I am working on BA at UMass Amherst University Without Walls where I am majoring in Creative Writing and Communication in the Digital Age.

I had a visitor to my front porch this morning. A little red squirrel who eventually started tearing into an old cushion on beat up wicker chair with a basket of fake forsythia in it. I grabbed the cameras. And then I grabbed my big 8.5″ x 11″ journal and started writing. I”ll take it… one page at a time.

Little Red Pays a Visit: (more…)

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Hot Running Tap

Delving through an unpublished manuscript of my poetry, I ran across this piece that hits home for me right now…


hot running tapHot Running Tap

Surely, had I looked
The other way,
I would have seen you coming;
The look in your eyes,
Your smile,
Your lines that flowed
Like a hot running tap.
But I, was too intrigued
By your fiery
Lingering glances.
And yet, somehow
I felt safe enough
To take my chances.
And now,
As the disenchantment sets in,
And I think to myself,
I will never
See you again;
I realize
Had I looked
The other way,
I would have seen
You coming,
And spared myself
Getting burned.

© Pamela J. Leavey (From my unpublished poetry manuscript: Rogue Lovers, Thieves Of My Heart, And Others)

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Be Just Woman

Decades ago when I started my personal foray into women’s studies, the field was still quite new. A feminist at heart, I was raised by a mother who also felt the tug of women’s rights strongly, as she came of age in the time of the early women’s rights movement in America. It is fear that causes men to still thwart women’s rights. It is fear that keeps some women from speaking up and claiming their own. Yet, we women are strong, powerful, “brilliant beings,” and many still long for the rights of simply be themselves.

The Temple of Five by Lisa Marquis BradburyBe Just Woman

In the brilliance
Of my madness,
Only then can I see
The sadness,
That walks,
And talks
In a million
Brilliant beings.
I see it on the corner,
In every face
Of every woman,
In the shops,
On the bus,
Every one,
They are all us.
We have long to speak
Our voice,
To tell our feelings,
Be just women.
We have long to walk
Our walk,
To talk
Our talk,
Be just women.
We are mothers
To our children,
Fierce and docile
Both by nature.
We are friends
To our sisters,
And lovers,
To our men.
We are feminists,
Who want to be
Feminine,
Honored and revered,
But instead
In our passing,
We are often not loved,
Only feared.
© Pamela Leavey
Temple of the Five by Lisa Marquis Bradbury ©

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Like A Piece Of Discarded Trash

When our hearts have been broken, we feel so alone, like the solitary swan pictured below, or worse, like a piece of discarded trash, left by the wayside. It takes time for a broken heart to heal and we each find our through the pain in our own time and space. Grief is a powerful emotion and lost love is a grievous affair.

Like A Piece Of Discarded Trashsoloswan

When does a heart cease
To be broken,
When does a vow cease
To be significant.
When can you walk away
And, leave the pain behind
Like a piece of discarded trash.
There comes a point,
When enough
Is enough.
It’s time to move on;
But, you feel
You are cheated,
Of the love
You thought that was shared.
And, the emptiness hangs on,
Like a piece of gum,
Stuck upon the bottom of your shoe.
Time often becomes,
Immeasurable;
And, you wish that
It would refrain.
And, so you cling
To what was once
Engaging.
When does a heart cease
To be broken,
When does a vow cease
To be significant.
When can you walk away,
And, leave the pain behind,
Like a piece,
Of discarded trash.

© Pamela Leavey

If your heart is broken, have faith… In time you will find the strength to love again.

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