Oh no we didn't.

I am aware that I use my sense of humor as a coping mechanism when shit starts hitting the fan, but I never expected to literally find myself breaking down into hysterical fits of laughter last night while watching election results roll in. 

I have done my very best to avoid political discussion of any kind with anyone not living in my home, and I didn't really feel anxious about the whole thing until suddenly half the east coast was red. And at first I thought, well, the south is always red, just wait. But then there was just... more red. And more. And some more for good measure. So much red. All the red, everywhere. 

Today we are looking around in confusion, wondering what to tell our kids, and all manner of other ridiculously important things that have no right to even be questioned at this point, like deportation and walls and civil liberties and misogyny and sexual health. AGAIN. I don't understand how we got dragged back to this ugly, uncertain, hopeless place. 

This morning I read a post by a complete stranger that was one of the most naive, candy coated garbage sentiments I have read in a while. "Maybe it won't be as bad as everyone thinks! Maybe this is actually going to be good for us!" It produced yet another involuntary peel of laughter from deep within the place my heart used to lie, mostly unbroken. Then I cried. 

The thing is, though, I think that's also the moment I felt a tiny sliver of hope sneak in. Not because I have any hope that "maybe it won't be so bad." But because maybe this IS going to, eventually, be good for us. 

I say that because the issues here aren't just targeted at one group this time. It's not just about women's issues. It's not just about gay rights. It's not just about the black community. It's not just about immigration. It's about ALL of those things, together. We are all in this shit together. I hope we stand, united, and kick some ass. Or, maybe that's my own level of naivity peeking through. I don't know yet. It's all the hope I have to cling to right  this second, though.

The thing growing in the closet

So far, I've spent the first week of 2015 trying to clean out a giant mess of mold in my closet. I would like to think of this as a metaphor. I would like to, but, there is, or was, a giant mess of mold in my closet; the real deal stuff, that I am extremely allergic to. We sealed the windows to shut out the drafty cold in our old house, and in the process we gave the spores of decay a place to fester and thrive amongst the overflow of boxes of memories and junk we failed to unpack. We didn't notice right away until it was climbing the walls and carpeting the outsides of our boxes of memories, and the illness had already set in.

It's really the perfect metaphor, isn't it?

The truth is, I have a lot of mold in my metaphorical closet, as well, that I hope to finally clean out this year. I want to unpack those long forgotten boxes of memories, good and bad, toss out the ones that I don't want or need any longer, air the newly emptied space out until I feel healthy and whole again. I feel like I have become a hoarder of things that have been detrimental to my psyche, and I am ready to call in the cleaning crew. I don't want to be insulated from the rest of the life that I could be living.

I'm going to write one of my books this year, and find someone to publish it. That is the sum total, along with the above closet cleaning, of my new year resolution. It's a big one, but I believe I am going to do it.

A love letter

I haven't seen her in a long time, but I remember still, "my therapist says" that sometimes you have to accept that some people in your life that are very important to you are never going to have the relationship with you that you expect, or need. That you either accept that they are flawed, just like you, and love them anyway, or you cut them loose. Either option seems to take a colossal amount of strength. When you're sitting across the table from this person that you love, will always love with your whole being, and  are faced with this excruciating dillema, it's all too easy to try your very best to hold on; to eat all the garbage they dish out despite the health warnings; to declare that unconditional love means loving through the hurt and unfairness. Because, afterall, you aren't without your flaws, too, right? And aren't they showinging you the same measure of unconditional love?

What are they showing you when they use slurs to your face, and make you feel inadequate as a person capable of caring for another living being, and less than, and doomed? Is that what unconditional love is? "You are all of these really horrible things, and I want you to feel every second of loathing, but I love you, too." Is that the gist of it? Is there some primer to the varying levels of unconditional love that I perhaps missed the day they handed them out? Yes; no?

Because, as a mother, I have a very different idea of what that all is supposed to mean. Things like: you may choose a path that is completely unexpected, but I am absolutely going to be there to cheer you on, to pull you up when you fall, to be the ear you need to listen, to be the arms you need to hug, to tell you how amazing you are, to learn from you the things you want to teach me, to share with you the things I think are important, and to understand that you are not an extension of me. You are your own person. That to help you grow to be confident in yourself, I am confident in myself enough to know that when you don't agree with me, it isn't a rejection of ME, but a step toward your own independence and happiness and truth. That I won't fixate on our differences, and instead celebrate them as much as our similarities, for you are my love letter to life, and I hope to be a part of yours. Rather than some abstract eternity, the stories you tell of me to your children, to your grandchildren, to your great-grandchildren, are how I plan to live on, and so those stories must be exceptional and full of love, and heartfelt, for how else will they know of the great love that they have descended from and are a part of? There is no one else's opinion that matters to me more than yours, no matter who you love, or what career has chosen you, or what clothes you wear, or what shade your skin is, or what your tattoos look like, or what music you listen to, or what your favorite movie is. You are forever my love letter to the universe. Unconditionally.

So I don't understand love labled as "unconditional" if that isn't it.

Because, as I mentioned an entry or two ago, I still very much feel like a kid. My not so average Joe had to go before I was ready to loosen my grip, and I still need as much unconditional love from the rest of my family as I can get, regardless of who, where, what, when, and why my life takes me; I, too, am deserving of truly unconditional love. It has taken my whole life up to this point, a therapist or two, amazing friends and my best friend slash heroic husband, and exactly two glasses of wine, to realize that I deserve it, too. I have an entire lifetime of memories to remind me of what I don't deserve, or want, or need in my life. I don't want to be "a good girl," and I don't need to go pick a switch off the orange tree, or ask you if you're done yet after I feel the welts rise on my legs from a metal coat hanger, or wonder why there is no one on God's entire green earth that I can talk to when I am hurt. I need someone to tell me that I don't have to try to keep the peace, to hold all of the grown up relationships together at the expense of my own safety and sanity. That I don't have to get in the car with my drunk biological father and scream at the oncoming lights as he swerves into the other lane of traffic, or be the one to make all the phone calls to try to get him to interact with me, or anyone else in my family that leaves it up to me, to hear them say they just don't have time for me, or to have to hear about how much you still find them handsome, or fun, or that I should give them a call, yet again. I don't need to hear that I have to try to shove myself into the door of one more church after years of hearing that no matter what I do, and even though Jesus made me too, I'm going to burn in hell because I love one too many genders.

I am enough. I am my own person, and I matter, and I have written my love letters across the ethos of the world, and they will carry me through an eternity of unconditional love. And. It feels. Pretty. Damned. Good. I hope you wake up in time to scawl your post script.

Love, Me.
Love me.
Love=Me.

(Yeah, it's all the same.)

Send in the clowns.

I feel like the blink-blink-blink of the cursor on a blank page; waiting to span the syllables of something; some something that I hope turns out to have a decent, meaningful conclusion. I am going to carpe the shit of some diem, and tapdance my black letters all over this barren white; fill it up as I empty out.

That's what I feel.

The reality of the situation is that I also feel stuck in that short pause from blink to blink - there is no cursor, only the most cursory of allusions to a page, and the words are caught in my throat. "I wish I had an actual keyboard to type on; this tablet bullshit has worn thin," I think for the hundredth time. As true as that is, it also feels like an excuse to recuse myself from the task of facing my thoughts as they spill across the page. I don't want to look. Gawking at the corpse of your past is never easy; clumsy fingers reaching out to snatch you back to some point in time reminding you of what you had, or what you lost, or where you're still too angry and sick to peel back the bandages and assess the damage.

I have begun the ritual of writing: jamming some music into my ears to drown out the distracting silence, hot mug of tea near to hand, horrible cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. I am too old to be a hipster, but all of the cliches are there, earned honestly through my time so far on this planet. And I guess that's part of the big problem. I'm going to open my own little mental jewelry box where I've stored all of my most sacred thoughts, and instead of the ballerina popping up in endless pirouette to the musical chime, it's going to be some clown holding a busker's sign that says every negative thing we always tell ourselves; the music will be to the tune of sad trombone fanfare. Or, you know, that's what I tell myself.

The precursor to the big monsters in the closet is this. The modern dance of artistry looks a lot like bleeding feet en pointe; years of tiptoed survival summed up with a tidy satin bow. When the clown car is unpacked and the bruises and scrapes and scars are on full, naked, display, your inner ring leader takes a bow and you're left in charge of the popcorn mess in the aisles. The freak show you carry around in your brain still isn't sure you're capable of displaying their horrors properly, but you're all they've got; and so goes the dance; the show and telling of the soul.

I need to get a life.

I am the proud new owner, for the second time in my life, of the phrase "my therapist told me...." Actually, it's kind of the reverse; I sit in the chair and tell her everything for an hour every week. On the mornings of "therapy day," I wake up with a giant knot in the center of my stomach and an overwhelming urge to have a panic attack - the symptoms of a hardcore, long-term "do-it-yourselfer" that is coming to grips with the fact that I can no longer do-it-myself at this time. Someone who has awoken in the cold sweat nightmare of discovering that, despite my insightful and honest approach, I have become a victim of aimless existence rather than kicking ass and taking names. I have become accustomed to allowing things to happen instead of making them happen.

How did that happen?