The turn of a phrase.

For all of my life, up to this point, I have thought "ignorance is bliss" to be the most spectacularly stupid phrase. I question, and seek out answers, and want to know why all of the moving parts move the way that they do. I enjoy knowing why things are the way they are. My brain jots down random trivia and stores it with the other garbage I've collected over the years, like how to sing certain songs in french I learned in childhood. I could comfortably say, "it is the way it is," because I knew why it was that way.

But I can't help feeling, lately, maybe if I knew less, understood less, felt less, wanted less, expected less from life; maybe I could be as content as everyone else is. The happily coupled people, and the ones who know exactly where they're headed in life, and the ones who are just happy to be alive and raising hell, or, hell, raising chickens. I feel like my head is crammed full of uselessness that has alienated me from happiness. From contentment. From finding my place in my own life.

My life is whizzing by at the speed of light, and I'm just sat here shrugging because it doesn't even feel like it belongs to me. I have outsmarted myself. Ignorance could be bliss. I get it now.

I want to unlearn everything. I want to unlearn mistrust, and fear, and abandonment; cynicism, regret. I want to unlearn how to use humor and sarcasm and ambivalence as a shield. I want to unlearn overthinking and anxiety and how to blurt out every last thought that runs through my unfiltered tongue. I want to unlearn all of these coping mechanisms, and start over in a world in which they were never necessary to my survival.

"But then, you wouldn't be you," my brain says. "How would that work?"

I don't know.
Ignorance could be bliss.

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.

Mucked Up, With a Capital F.

It's nearly 2 years since the last time I wrote anything in here, and still I have the phrase "my therapist says.." on my mind. It's been a couple of years since I've spoken to one of my very own; these days the phrase I'm most likely to use is "my friend Google says...."

So, my friend Google says that I have abandonment issues.

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.)

We don't *do* F2F anymore.

My friend Kari recently made an entry in her blog about how people just aren't talking on the phone anymore, as in - the internet is the new all-encompassing social hub. I have to admit, I didn't really think about it much because I am not a phone person. I'm not even really a "face to face" person, to be honest; every relationship I've ever had outside of my husband and my kids, I have let slip through my fingers. It's not that I'm not interested [well, in lots of cases, I'm sure], but ... uhm, I don't have a therapist just for kicks. I have issues - probably more than your local magazine rack. I have them for valid reasons, but I have reached a point in my life where it is time to put those issues on a shelf and get on with things.