Salt in the Wound

I can't sleep.  I'm too angry. 

Too disgusted with the human race tonight.  Too infuriated by political agendas, legal loopholes, and people who dodge the responsibility to be decent fucking human beings.  Too much.  It is too much tonight.

It's a night where I'm glad I sit alone in my bedroom and have nothing better to do then write in this stupid blog. 

Injustice makes me insanely angry.  I believe in unfaltering fairness- something that I know doesn't exist in this world.  But I believe in it all the same.  I try to practice it daily.  I own up and take responsibility when I fail or neglect to be fair.  So it would make sense, I think, to expect that of others.  That whole golden rule thing comes into play.

But life is not fair.  And neither are the people in it.

You know how I know this?  Because over a year ago, I worked in a town where I was chased out of my job.  I got reprimanded almost daily.  I was punished for being ill at work.  People called my home and harrassed me, leaving voice messages and ringing me in at all hours of the night.  Support groups in place for my position suddenly dropped their funding and pointed their fingers at me.  People began making up accounts where I had said something or done something inappropriate, and anyone who defended me suddenly became silent.  The lawyer I was appointed was batting for the other team because I was young enough to not need protection, or rather, not require the kind of protection I needed.

I experienced workplace abuse in the worst possible way- the kind where they can hide it in legal documents, claim hearsay, and state that everything "was documented".  Nothing was ever questioned.  I was never supported or protected.  I was burned at the stake.

And now, almost a year and a month later...I find out that this same place...has been defaming me to future employers.  And there's nothing I can do about it, because "good faith" practice dictates that they have the right to speak what they believe is the truth.

And it's bullshit.

I applied to over 70 jobs in the last 6 months.  I had at least 6 interviews.  I received a lot of "2nd place" phone calls.  And in my last interview, I found out why.  I had been charged with "unprofessional conduct" by my previous place of employment.  And only one person remains in that locale.  Only one that would even know my name well enough to speak ill of it.  And it was the man who was hell-bent on destroying me.  Either I would quit or I would be fired.  And he knew I had to stay to collect unemployment.  So he browbeat me until I collapsed- and then, when I did, he found a loophole in the contract that gave him grounds enough that a lawyer wouldn't push it too far- and fired me.

But I was supposed to have a neutral recommendation. 

Society dictates that if you tell a prospective employer not to contact a previous employer, that sends a red flag and shuts down any possibility of being employed anyhow.  Naturally I didn't want to ruin my chances.  So I trusted that the settlement that was agreed to by my lawyer and that town would be honored.

What a fucking moron I was.

My lawyer- surprise, surprise- is suddenly unreachable.  The people who are her closest contacts are some of the people who I later found out, destroyed me.  Half the district's evildoers have higher positions now.  And the monster?  Still gloating.  Apparently to everyone in the state.  So that's it.

Cornered doesn't begin to describe it.  Angry doesn't graze the surface of it.  Betrayal is so deep that you could drop a penny into the pit and never hear it hit bottom. 

And unjust.  Oh, GOD, the injustice. 

The central abuser is a pillar of society now.  Surrounded by his damned minions and his pen-and-paper accusations.  All I wanted to do was move on.  I thought if I let them dismiss me, it would finally be over.  I thought that if I left town and never spoke of it again, I'd be all right.  I'd find work again.

But people are evil.  And they like to chase others.  And watch them crumble.

And all I can do is hope and pray that someone does the same thing to them.
Only with ten times the ferocity.

This is where the human mind finds the word revenge appealing.  When something or someone acts in such a way that it destroys your way of life, instinct kicks in- fight back.  Unfortunately, fighting back has repercussions, and if you're a good citizen, well...you figure out pretty quick that fighting back will only hurt you again.  But some people ignore that.  I wish I could be one of those people.  But I'm not.  I like being a good citizen too much.

But this is the last smackdown from "the system" that I can take.  And I don't know how, or with what means, but I will work and live and thrive outside of large public corporate structures if it kills me.  I will trust no one and no thing, and no system and no place, and no belief and no "mindset", and if anyone or anything demands that of me, I will run, as fast as I can, in the opposite direction.  (I might make an exception for my husband.)

Rest in peace, trust.  Rest in peace, respect.  Rest in pieces.  I'll miss you.  I'll miss the faith I had in the judicial system, in the system of checks and balances within a workspace...I'll miss feeling like I could finally have some normalcy in my life.

Because as long as I live, I will never go back to working in that part of the public sector.  Ever.  Again.
I'd like to keep my soul while it's still battered and breathing.
If it is, anyway...


Motherfuckers.

Anniversaries, August, and the Cult

I dislike the term "anniversary".  So many people in my life have taken that word and turned it into a boon, a burden, etc.  So when I think of happy things, I don't use the word "anniversary".  I use something else.

But August is full of anniversaries- for me...for my family...for my husband...
More importantly, however, August...is a turning point in my wheel of the year.  A particularly sparkly spoke, if you will.  It isn't just because my birthday lands in it.  It's because everything seems to land in it.  It's like my own personal Chinese new year.  While the rest of the world wraps up its dog days of summer, I'm wracking my brain wondering how things will be different this year from the next.

I'm nearing my thirties.  That happens in August.  I've been alive and on this planet for more than a quarter of a century.  1/4 of a very healthy man's life.  (Possibly half of mine.  Who knows?)

My mother's mother was also born in August.  She's no longer with us, but I still remember, just the same.

The first and second of August were days of religious observance for me from about 2005-2008, respectively.  I celebrated the pagan holiday Lammas.  I often treated this as my new year and gathered tasty treats and bid farewell to summer.  I loved sending summer off with a bang.  I always welcomed fall, and Lammas gave me the opportunity to run to it head-on, colliding into its brisk arms in a crunchy hug of falling leaves and frosty cider.  I couldn't tell you why I don't still celebrate it.  Well...I suppose I could, but I'm not sure if it would be the right answer.  I miss it- but I'm not about to pick back up and reinvent my holiday traditions.  I blocked a lot of them- most of them- after 2007.  In my last year of celebrating Lammas, I forgot- entirely- how I celebrated in the past.  I instead spaced out for 2 hours and forgot what I was doing.  I also got candle wax all over my dorm floor.  I don't think you can call that celebration, really.

But I did do one thing that was bloody brilliant that August.  That very last Lammas celebration, I offered up a prayer- the very last request I made as a confirmed pagan. 

I asked God for my soulmate.

It wasn't anything dramatic.  I didn't chant or scrawl things into candles...well, I did, but I did most of that for me, to symbolize my commitment to the change I was inviting into my life.  I got up at dawn on a day on my vacation by the beach and I walked 2 miles up the cliffs and down the rocks to a little alcove where no one but you can see and feel and touch and taste the beach.  I gathered stones on my way down to the sand.  I gathered my little black handbag that had poetry about what I envisioned in my soulmate- and what I would be open to.  Some rose quartz and rose petals accompanied me in that bag, I think.  I sat in the sand, circled myself in the stones, and waited for the sun to rise over the water.  I was quiet, pensive...and very afraid. 

Let's back up a bit.  I mention I was afraid.  This is because at this particular point in my life, God- to me- was dangerous.  He/she was more unknown to me than ever.  God had put me in harm's way, or let me walk in harm's way, or something.  God, as confident as I was in his existence and his ability to make everything happen for a GOOD reason, was not making it very clear that I was in his good graces.  To be fair, it really wasn't God's fault.  See, I had placed my trust in a human- a group of humans, in fact- who felt in touch with God- and who also, in their zealousness, had placed a threat on my life.

I belonged to a spiritual group we'll simply call the Corps.  Outside of its backyard existence, it wasn't likely anyone knew who we were or what we believed- I doubt most of us knew ourselves.  But the Corps was homegrown, made from a group of teenagers who dared to ask "why" after most religious organizations had thrown these grand coming of age parties for us that we hardly understood.  We all had different backgrounds coming in- I fell into the group somehow because I was dating the leader.  Who knew what a shitstorm he could spin.

The short of the story is that the Corps went fom a spiritual think tank to a fully functional cult.  Our group met regularly to mentally and physically "train" for upcoming spiritual battles.  We also practiced a moderate form of paganism- some of us in traditional form, some of us in New Age form, some of us in its own eclecticity.  I was still very attached to my Roman Catholic upbringing.  Paganism was a hard transition for me- but mysticism in the Bible helped me better transition and plugged the holes that confirmation had brought upon me.  I was a good Pagan.  I was even a great Pagan.  And while I didn't really advertise that I was with Vode or practiced what bordered on Wicca, I knew it was at least a little visible to folks.  I didn't much mind.  I figured if I didn't shove it in anyone's face, it was no big deal.

But he wanted me to.  The leader of the Corps, an ex that I now pined after in my late teens, wanted to see me take the organization further.  It was no good if we couldn't mobilize, he said.  And I was the perfect one to mobilize- of the entire group, I was the only one to attend college- far enough away that I could no longer make Corps meetings.  I'd have to find another way to contribute.  I guess it couldn't hurt to share my experiences with others- so I did.  Within months of the beginning of my sophomore year in college, I had initiated 3 new people into the Corps and become a leader of a sort of hiving off of it.

I didn't like feeling like I was associated with the Corps.  I really desperately wanted to take some time to explore my individual spirituality.  Things were starting to get weird.  The higher ups, namely our leader, were having "visions"...visions that would turn into prophecies, seemingly overnight.  Visions I would question- and then have nightmares and no longer question them.  Instead of spending my nights up studying for school, I studied the Bible.  I scoured religious texts for similes.  I pawed at my Tarot cards and prayed to anyone and anything that would listen.  And weird shit would happen.  Stuff I just couldn't materialize as coincidental.  Hallucinations of portals in my bedroom ceiling.  Dreams of angels.  And a sick foreboding feeling about the end of the world.

I didn't really pick up on the false doctrines my leader was implanting in me.  I suppose I really couldn't have around that time- in addition to being a member of the Corps and attending regular meetings, I was also dealing with the pseudo relationship I had with the Corps's leader.  When I began in the group, we had been together- then broke up.  My mother thought he was dangerous, so I ended it.  (She could not have been more right.)  We met, often in secret, to discuss thoughts and viewpoints, for a few years.  Toward the end of high school, my leader became more persuasive in his speeches to our group- and more predatory toward me.  His questions would spike in sexuality, to the point where a meditation with him one on one over the phone would end in some powerful phone sex.  I suspected he had decided to take me back, and welcomed his advances at first...until I noticed that his advances had nothing to do with love.  More and more, he insisted that his advances were to help me break my barrier of sexual repression, to release my truest self, and etc.  He said one afternoon that if it came down to it, he would "take one for the team" and force himself upon me if it came to that.

Rape wasn't in my vocabulary then.  Rape was a word used to identify other women who were too weak-willed to stand up to the men that assaulted them.

How ashamed I was when it finally dawned on me, many years later, that one afternoon before my high school graduation was the day my leader felt he was destined to rape me.

And how glad I was that, despite 45 minutes of sexual assault under the guise of "guided meditation", I had somehow managed to escape being penetrated.  It was my proudest moment.

But at 20, now having spent about 5 years in the Corps (memory is fuzzy), I had all but shut this out.  I didn't even remember it.  I didn't even remember that it was the reason that the August of my high school graduation, I broke up with my now husband, for the first time, because I was convinced that I had asked to be touched and stimulated by 2 Corps members that fateful afternoon...and that meant I had been unfaithful to my boyfriend.  You cannot imagine what it is like to feel pleasure and wish that you could kill every nerve in your body, to get it to stop responding, to make it whisper or scream "NO", to keep saying "no" over again and think "no one will ever take me seriously"...

But as far as I was concerned, the sophomore-in-college me never experienced any of that- no, that was a spiritual enlightenment, a special initiation into my true calling.  A calling to be a divine witness...to what, I wasn't sure.  That year, I would find out.  And I wouldn't like it.

Paranoia seemed to be the drug of choice in the Corps.  If I didn't have a circle and talk to my leader about it, he'd get upset and want to know what the fuck I was doing.  He showed up to a circle of mine once- and met my initiates.  When he began to hit on one of them, I wanted to scream.  I could have reached right out and strangled him for petting her shoulder in circle that night.  I could have scratched his eyes out with my own nails- I couldn't understand my rage- I rationalized it- I rationalized it away, that I had picked up on some negative force, some old misplaced jealousy, and I let them be alone with each other.  I knew better.  God, I knew better.  But I never saw it coming.  And when she came to me the next morning and asked me if I knew where the nearest pharmacy was, I wanted every bone in my body to disintegrate- and for the LIFE of me, I could not understand why taking her to a planned parenthood clinic in the ghetto of our city was making me so physically ill.  I couldn't understand.  I had blocked any thought of harm.

The blocks came off when I started to hear him discuss the End Days.  I was in a sort of sick twister of religious jumblings and storytelling...trying to find proofs for every word that came from our leader's mouth.  And I was getting sick, too.  One afternoon, after a particularly challenging day of poring through some books on Wicca and contrasting them with my Bible and another religious script, I flipped the TV on to the History Channel.  There was a documentary there about Jonestown and its massive murder tragedy.  I had never even heard of Jonestown before then, but suddenly I felt immense pain.  The more I watched, the more my nerves began to sizzle.  I shook with rage when I heard Jim Jones' voice as he rallied his people...I shook with fear when I heard him ceremoniously call them to the vats of poison.  At the end of the documentary, I was violently ill, and at a complete loss to explain it.  I must have cried for hours.  I woke up the next morning with my eyes sealed shut from the swelling from the tears.  I got up and wrote music that day...I called the piece "Lullaby for the Human Race".  And I called my leader and told him of my experience.

And he called it an epiphany.

I didn't know what that meant.  I wasn't sure I wanted to know.  I had a sick feeling in my stomach when he said it, and proclaimed how proud he was of my tremendous breakthrough, and how wonderful things would all be very soon.  I didn't feel wonderful.  He buffered me with cries of how wonderfully compassionate my heart was and how well suited I was to be called to such a great mystery.  I thought he was on crack.  I questioned his health frequently after that.  He would smile and patronize me that I could rationalize myself out of such an immense task.

What was the task?  Oh, well, wouldn't you know...I was actually an incarnation, he said, of the seventh angel in Revelations.  After all the others blew down the world in the End Times, I would be the one to sound the call of rebirth, the song of forgiveness to the human race.

I didn't like the sound of this, but I had learned not to question my leader by now.  Maybe it was metaphorical, after all- he couldn't possibly be this serious about such a thing.  I decided to bring it up in jest one afternoon and test the metaphoric usage.  I had been so misguided.  I joked about the end of the world and my supposed role, and, while still laughing, asked him what his big important role would be.

"Oh haven't you figured that out, sweetie?  I am the beginning of the end.  I am the Christ."

Something absolutely snapped inside me when he spat those words out.  Suddenly, he was a peon.  Suddenly, he was nothing to be feared- he was a charlatan, a sick son of a bitch playing sick mind games with people, and damn it, I was going to tell him so.  This joke, this game had gone on far enough.  I never saw myself as much of a "Jesus Christ" cheerleader, but in that moment at that point in time, it was my saving grace, the switch that finally flipped for me to state, loudly enough,

"No.  You're not.  You, my friend, are fucking crazy, and I'm done with all of this."

And of course, I let him rationalize.  I let him talk.  I let him give me reasons WHY this had to be so.  But I couldn't listen any more.  And as all of my years of learning tumbled down around me, I hissed at his blasphemy, raged at his nonchalance.  How DARE he compare himself to such a high power?  How DARE he?  Who was HE to talk of such things?!  I could hardly stop myself from speaking.  I was furious beyond a state I even understood.  And as he listened to my rant, he began to speak quieter and quieter, until finally his words were just letters jumbled together on my computer screen.

"Wow.  Well then.  I guess I'm just going to have to kill you."

I remember that I laughed at first.  Laughed right out loud.  Told him he was sick and a whole bunch of other things.  And then the texts came.  Line by line.  Details on how he knew where I lived.  Details I never gave him.  Details of the kind of weapon he'd use.  How he would do it.  How I could prepare myself to die with dignity.  How he understood why I couldn't bring myself to believe in the truth, and that I would be forgiven for it, but I could not stand in the way of the great plan.  He quoted my zipcode.  He mentioned sharpening his knife.  He cautioned me not to lock my door and to stop pleading for my pathetic life.  And signed off.

I. Panicked.

Within minutes, I was on the phone to anyone who would listen, who wouldn't judge me, and who wouldn't ask questions.  I wasn't about to tell someone I was in some sort of religious cult and now the leader was after me because I thought he was cracked and wanted out- I just didn't have the frame of mind to go through that.  My best friend told me to call the police.  I called them.  They came.  They took one look at the conversation on my computer screen, told me I "could have doctored it" if I "had an axe to grind against an old boyfriend or something", laughed me off, and said to stop talking to drunk guys at night.  My roommate didn't even take me seriously.  I didn't sleep that night.  I didn't think I ever would again.  For the next two weeks, I slept in the basement of different college buildings so that I could be behind locked doors where guards would be watching 24/7.

I'm not going to kill you.  Idiot.  Thank you for showing me how pathetic and completely worthless you really are.

You'd think that would be the end of it.  But he chased me even after that.  I got a year of peace and then another call to arms.  "You threatened my life," I said angrily, "you don't get a second chance.  You or your fucking group."  But he would still call.  He'd dig.  By now, I had moved to a new location.  And I had dumped any trace of practicing paganism or any other religion.  As far as I was concerned, if I so much as sent a prayer up, the Corps doppler would catch me and shoot me down.  I couldn't.  I was paralyzed with fear around anything spiritual.  I stayed that way for quite a while.

Until an August about 4 years ago, when I finally summoned the strength to say, in one of his last prying phone calls, "If you call this number again, I will call the cops.  They will find you and they will arrest you.  And if I were you, I'd be more afraid of my threat...because it's not a threat.  It's a promise.  Leave me alone."

I don't have to tell you, I'm sure, that I didn't have to make the phone call.  I doubt it would have done me any good.  I couldn't even get a restraining order out of the written death threat I had received that night.  I no longer trust law enforcement to protect me- any more than I trust ANYONE to protect me, other than myself.

So he disappeared.  And I went and spoke to God at dawn on a cool breezy beach that August.  And I told him I was ready to be free.  And that, if and when I was ready, I would love to meet my REAL soulmate.  That there was no hurry- but that if I had managed to find it within myself to walk away from this cult leader, I probably had a good idea of who I was- if not externally.

And my high school squeeze, just like that, walked back into my life.  And dated me long distance for years.  And finally married me, just last month, almost exactly a month ago today.  And I wouldn't change a thing about it- or him.

He knows that August is hard for me.  It's hard on him, too.  Anniversaries are not pleasant for him- his brother died over 10 years ago this month.  And yet he can still appreciate how I still feel stabbed in the chest by the Corps and its leader, how I feel scraped empty and I always question what the "truth" really is...until it leaves me spaced out and crying on the couch.  And he can appreciate that the pain of a similar betrayal that happened last August with a therapist is just as real, just as awful.

But that is a story for another time.

Lammas has come and gone.  I've not celebrated it.  But I do celebrate August, with all my heart and soul, however internal it may be. 

Because every August, I learn a little bit more about who I truly am.  And how truly strong I can be.

Father Figure

Heat fills up my face and torso.  The screen blips and the machines start beeping to alert the masses.  My pulse just spiked from 90 to 120 and it refuses to drop.  And my spine feels like it's going to throw up.  That's probably the strangest sensation out of all the symptoms- feeling like your spine just became human, grew a stomach and an esophagus, and just ate a live squid.  My arms tingle and I feel a squeeze on my forearm from my husband.  "Hey, are you okay?"

I'm having a minor anxiety attack- and by sheer coincidence, I happen to be in an emergency room, hooked up to a machine that takes my vitals.  I'm here for a routine examination while trapped between insurances and doctor changes, but someone pushed the magic button in my brain, somehow...and I just short-circuited my personal machine.  It's all I can do to keep myself from throwing up.  And the doctor walks in to my screen of biological nonsense bleeping and blipping and asks me if my pulse is normally this high, making skeptical notes on her chart.

"It's...I have panic disorder.  And I'm not a big fan of hospitals," I mutter sheepishly.  She walks over and holds one of my hands, which is both soothing and awkward, and tells me to think of fluffy puppies.  I get what she's trying to do.  I tell my brain and my vomit-spine and my subconscious shame to shut down immediately.  I don't think of puppies because trying to think of a singular something is like surfing the internet for the definition to a word- you get sidetracked, end up playing a game, chatting on Facebook, and researching our dream vacation all in the same space, and that word is nonexistent the second you flip the power button.  No.  I prefer to pull the plug when I'm losing control.  I find a point on the wall where the paint meets the cement and force myself into believing that I'm sleeping.  My muscles unclench, my breathing deepens, and my vision blurs.  I haven't always been this good at shutting off my body, but I can temporarily stall the engine to give it a systemic reset.  I can feel the waves of panic just slightly above my head- they will come back the second I realize I'm not actually sleeping, but I might be slightly better at coping with the waves now that I have a subconscious surfboard.  My pulse dips and the beeping stops.  I make a joke at 90 miles per word that I must have died for a second there, and my pulse spikes and then stabilizes at an uncomfortable 106.  The doctor smiles and pats my hand, and tells the nurse to mark it at 106 and note that unfamiliar environments can be unpleasant for folks with anxiety.  I'm filled with gratitude, and my pulse spikes and then drops again.


Most of the time, when anxiety hits, I go through it and try not to let it resurface.  But today I'm consumed with the why.  Triggers, for me, are usually pretty obvious.  The night before an interview, I'm always violently ill.  Documentaries about cults send me into a cleaning frenzy or a writing storm, accompanied by the shakes and a side of asthma.  And a grab of the wrists apparently causes an immediate retraction into the fetal position with the words, "Don't," repeated ad nauseum for about 10 minutes.  So I know my triggers, most of the time.  Sometimes smaller things set me off- changes in routine, travel that lasts over an hour, you know.  But today's trigger is so miniscule that I almost miss it.  I almost don't understand it.  So, of course, I have to analyze the fuck out of it.

The image of a therapist with sunglasses on his face...and he looks so...fucked...up...like something I've seen before in the movies...like......

I violently shake my head.  No.  Playing into paranoid images in my brain is NOT going to halt the oncoming train of anxiety.  That's what I'm supposed to be doing- halting it.  I turn it off for a while.

At half past bedtime o'clock, it's back, and this time, there's no chatter in the house to stop it from coming.  I turn on the television.  I plug into the computer.  I start cleaning.  And researching.  And writing.

Shit.  Wrong idea.  Here it fucking comes. 

This isn't a dream.  It's a memory.  It's a memory distorted by the encyclopedia that bangs around in my brain- but it is a flesh-and-blood memory.  And it's not one that I wanted to revisit...at all.  Still, it's not going to go away, so I force myself to stay in the present moment and recall accurately, without fantasizing a different ending or more dramatic flair to the images.  It's real, it happened, I'm not alone...and no matter how stupid it sounds, it's legitimately frightening to me, which is enough.

I break away from the noise of the TV, the glow of the computer screen, and the snoring of my husband, and go back.



"Sweetie, you're just stuck in a fascist, witch-hunt of a community that needs someone young and innocent to blame.  You're their virgin sacrifice.  You can choose not to be."
"Look, that's not the point, Joey.  I KNOW they're being assholes, okay?!  But I have to feed myself and live under a roof and have a place to sleep, you know?  I don't GET a fucking choice in the matter.  It's play along or ACTUALLY be killed.  I just have to wait until they fire me.  There's no other way out- I've got to be able to take care of myself when they do.  I can't risk losing unemployment."
"Fine.  Whatever you say, Claudia.  You always know best."
"Oh come on, please don't pull that shit at this hour.  You know I hate that."
"I'm sorry.  I'm really not trying to start shit with you, honey.  I meant it as a compliment.  You DO really know what's best for you, or you wouldn't be as strong as you are right now."
"I'm not strong.  It's 11 at night and I'm sobbing on the phone to my ex-therapist because the thought of waking up tomorrow scares the fuck out of me."
"You're sobbing on the phone to your friend who loves you and cares about you.  You're surviving.  And doing it damn well, given the circumstances."
"That too...I guess.  God, I wish there was something you could do- ANYONE could do- to make this easier."
"Me too, babe......yikes.  Sorry.  Pet names are really inappropriate, that one in particular.  Crossed a line there, I'm really sorry."
"Oh relax, like I'm going to yell at you for calling me 'babe'.  My own father calls me that.  It doesn't really bother me- if it did, you'd know."
"Okay."
"So...how about we talk about this project you're working on, or whatever.  You've been off the scene for a while in your current crusade, haven't you?"
"Yeah.  I just haven't been feeling well.  This call isn't about me, though, it's about you."
"Suppose I decide not to make it about me for the next fifteen minutes- that cool with you?  I just need to not be in my own head."
"I'll do what I can."
"Thanks."

There's a long blip in my memory as I start to remember that this was a phone conversation- a fragment of it- from last May, with an individual I had trusted very much.  Someone I never should have trusted at all.  Anyhow, the memory is back, like a skip on a videocassette, and I'm back listening to the conversation in my head as I stare out at the lights on the street through my window.  This part of my memory sends chills down my spine, and as I try to tell myself that it isn't real, that I must be overexaggerating, and anything else I can, my body gives me a sharp jolt of nervous energy that makes me feel pins and needles over every inch of my body.  It's as if my brain suddenly went, "I'm sorry, Claudia, but you don't get to minimize this one."  I'm back on that couch alone in my old house...at 3 am...laughing about something on the phone...and then...

"I've always felt and thought of you as like a daughter to me."
"That's flattering, Joey.  Thanks."
"I mean it.  I never got to have children.  I guess they weren't in the stars for me, or whatever.  But if I had a daughter, I bet...I hope...she'd be a lot like you."
"That's really touching, Joey.  I like having a sort of second father figure in my life, too.  You're a very dear friend."
"I wish I could just take you under my wing and get you AWAY from all that crap up there.  You know we have a spare bedroom at my house."
"Yeah...it's okay.  I appreciate the sentiment, but I've got family and stuff."
"Family that makes you feel like shit and like it's your fault for the way this company is abusing you......sorry.  I just don't get people who blame their child for things not working out to perfection."
"It's not their fault, Joey, come on.  They're as mad at that company as I am- they just...don't think that I'm blameless.  And I'm probably not."
"Bullshit!  What did you EVER do to deserve the treatment you're getting?!  The issue here has nothing to do with you being inadequate, it has to do with a pencil dick being in charge of your paycheck who's too goddamn insecure to take a look in the fucking mirror!!  I mean, someone oughta take a shotgun to the man's face and give him a wake-up call to the way he's treating you!"
"Heh, maybe.  That seems a bit extreme, though, don't you think?  Whatever.  It's just a job, right?"
"Yeah.  You're right.  I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to get all scary on you.  I just feel so bad- I really wish someone would go in there and defend your honor.  Or that YOU at least would."
"I am.  I'm just doing it passively.  They can eat shit as far as I'm concerned- I'll collect my paycheck one way or another.  It's just that another way to do that is to let them run me out so I can collect the money while not having to show up for work any more.  I'll do my healing then.  I promise."
"Okay, daughter of mine.  But you better take care of yourself, understand?  Don't make me do that trippy therapist thing."
"You ARE a therapist- that's what you do, ya moron.  But I gotcha.  I'll be okay.  I feel better talking to you.  Look, it's getting late- you're old and cranky and you should be in bed.  And if I want any shot at making it to work on time tomorrow, I need to get some sleep too.  Sheesh.  This was supposed to be a brainstorming session for your project, wasn't it?  I was supposed to be that lovely friend that helped put your ideas on paper?  What a lame-o I am, huh?"
"Stop that.  Don't make me come up there, missy.  You know that's not a real threat, right?"
"Haha, yeah, I know, Joey.  I know.  I'm sorry if I kept you up late."
"You didn't.  I'm up at this hour all the time anyway.  Can't really sleep.  Besides, you let me talk about what I needed to talk about too.  Nobody's hurt here.  Just sleep deprived."
"Right.  Well, that needs to be remedied.  So I'm gonna say goodnight, okay?"
"Okay, kiddo.  Listen...I love you.  I will never abandon you."
"I......yeah, you too.  Now go get some sleep, you old bastard, will ya?  Night."

The images faded, but the weird feeling in my gut from that strange night had returned.  Slowly, I let the image of myself standing up and hanging up the phone fade.  I watched my year-younger self start to shake, violently, talk out loud to myself that "that's not weird, is it?  Friends say that to each other, right?" and send myself into a spasmodic episode of dry heaves, in between, shoveling out the words- "But it IS weird.  It IS weird.  Father figure?!  The fuck?!  'Daughter of mine?'  I mean it's sweet and it's touching, but god, I am not COMFORTABLE with hearing this shit.  I gotta call this friendship off before it gets too weird.  Or I gotta distance myself.  Or something.  Jesus.  I can't handle this much transference.  I must be blowing it out of proportion- I mean for gods sake, all we do is talk on the phone, that's innocent enough.  Where's my phone?  I gotta talk to my fiancee.  Fuck.  It's 4 o'clock in the morning.  Oh god..."

My husband, well before he became my husband, knew...though he had his doubts...what was going on.  After I talked to him about that night, he asked me, carefully, if I knew how I was going to handle future interactions.  I told him I planned on just not calling the man any more.  If he wanted to talk, he could call me.  Normal people do that.  So the calls would come in, and in, and in.  In fact, the more I pulled away, the more that things...seemed to go wrong with Joey.  People would leave him, shit would get destroyed...it was like a hurricane of hell had descended on his simple life- and on top of that, clients were harrassing him.  Pity drove our conversations upward from fifteen minutes to three hours...again...this time, dominated by his tales of woe.  I felt sorry for him.  I wanted to help.  At one point, I thought of sending him a moneygram- just to help pay the grocery bill.  But by now, I was living under my now-husband's roof.  And he saw what was going on.  And he didn't like it.

My husband is not one to raise his voice.  He's not one to even raise his suspicions.  He keeps his thoughts to himself.  So when I got off the phone with Joey that afternoon and began to share the conversation with him, he quietly turned and asked me a question.

"Claudia?  Do you ever think that...I don't know...that's an awful lot of misfortune to happen in such a short period of time, to just one man?"

I bristled and became defensive.  "What, you think he's lying to me?  YOU, the expert on how much tragedy can befall another human being in their hour of need?!"  My husband raised his hands in defense, slowly...calmly.

"I just think that he's putting a lot of pressure on you to help him with his burdens.  Emotionally, I mean.  I know he doesn't expect anything of you physically and all that...but you care about people, and for people, very strongly.  I just don't want to see that compassion taken advantage of.  And I am afraid that's what he might be doing.  I hope I'm just overreacting."

My face softened as I realized what he had meant, and we cuddled for a long while after that and talked about some of the things that had happened while I was going through my job stress.  My husband had been deployed for a good chunk of that time, and Joey had been someone I could go to when I couldn't talk to my husband.  Joey was safe.  He didn't have an ulterior motive or sexual interest, he was just Joey.  But, in talking with my husband about all these conversations, I began to realize that Joey might have been anything but safe.

His suspicions were proven right just a few short months later, when Joey severed all contact with me after I unearthed some suspicious activities he had made on a project we had worked on together.  When I confronted him on them, he cried abuse and took off...changed his name, his profession, and his living locale, erasing everyone's hard work and writing each project member off so viciously that you would never know these had been long term friends he was working with.  I wasn't as hurt as I expected I'd be when he finally wrote me off as well...but newly afraid that I could be duped again, by someone equally as charismatic as Joey.  I developed a sense of injustice, and I started to embrace the uncomfortable feelings- my "red flags"- that I had gotten while talking with this man.  I got in touch with other "former friends".  I read- and listened- to patterns...patterns so identical, it was as if each person had been telling my story, without my even telling it.  Right down to the words Joey used in conversation.  I felt like throwing up.  A month after shit rained down on the project, I collapsed, feeling like I had just run through the rainforest in Guyana to get away from a vat of Kool-Aid.

A therapist with sunglasses on his face, all fucked up...shit, that was it.  The paranoid picture in my head.  I always thought Joey looked creepily like Jim Jones.  Why was that always an afterthought when I listened to him speak?  That image...that...thought...

I guess I know what triggered the attack now.  Just a paranoid picture in my head.  But a picture is worth a thousand words.  And more than a thousand went into this entry, I guess.  And of course Joey's not Jim Jones.  That's totally psychotic.  But it's interesting that my brain made a connection like that.  And it certainly isn't something I can just...ignore, either.  Joey got caught red-handed being a hypocrite and a monster- and when an intervention was staged in the presence of friends, he beat them up emotionally and fled like a rabid animal.  Maybe they do share some similarities.

Maybe I should also stop watching cult documentaries.

At least I have an explanation for the panic attack, anyway.  There's always a trigger.  I just never know which one my brain is going to pull.

God, I let him call me "daughter"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9hfHvQSNo

Winds of Change

It's amazing what happens when I open my big mouth.  Seriously.  One of these days I'm going to say something and it's going to start raining frogs.  Which will thoroughly gross me out.

That's sort of beside the point, really- you didn't come here for another metaphorical mumbling, did you? 

I honestly don't know why I did it.  I didn't even know where the bloody town was, for Gods sake.  I was in a stupor- three days married, seven days depressed...banged out this swell interview for this swell job and got told I was a second pick.  And that's all well and good and all, but second place doesn't go home with a paycheck.  At least in the Olympics you go home with a blasted silver medal.  Needless to say, I was feeling a little hopeless.  The lack of honeymoon didn't fucking help.  Returning to a minimum wage slave job didn't help.  Returning to a locale that didn't give a damn about me or my husband...also...did not help.  Are we getting the image yet?  Was not exactly in an amazing frame of mind.

But, incredibly, even in my most dim-witted of moments, I seem to do something that sends off some message to the heavens along the lines of: "Damn it, pull yourselves together up there!  She's giving up for fuck's sake, will you PLEASE come to order!"  And some planet or being or whatever you want to call it shoves those motherfuckers around until they're aligned in some trippy enough way that something downright unbelievable happens.

And that is what we- my collective mind- have decided to call this strange interview coming up.

I don't know what I did, really.  I've been off the circuit for a year, abandoned ship up north and flew south to be with the man I love and do mostly unimportant things.  I slept a lot.  I hid in the bedroom and ate potato chips a lot.  I fought flashbacks and therapists and spaced out a lot.  A whole year- just a blip of spiritual death on the radar screen.  A whole year of not creating some stunning glitzy resume, recording with some smashing symphony, teaching baby geniuses how to play the damned cello at 3 years old.  A whole year of that plus a year of rejection letters from various places- "impressive but no thanks", and so on.

And then I get this...phone call.  From a woman whose name is plain and whose voice is pleasant, and eager sounding, and would I like to interview next week?

Yeah, sure, why not.  Let's embrace another crushing blow to my ego.  Hell, I need a few more rejection letters to stitch to the quilt I'm going to wrap myself in when I'm homeless and the military shoves my husband and I ass-first onto the streets.  And she writes me back when I send my RSVP.  And she thanks me.  And she asks me if I have any other questions, or if there's anything she can do to assist me in making my trip convenient.

Another formality.  It has to be.  I'll make the million hour trek, trek it right back home, and get that lovely little rejection phone call two days later.  I'm used to this.

But...
...really, sincerely pleasant. 

Do I even know where I'm going, here?  I decide to look at the traffic route to this piddling interview I'm supposed to be taking.  And my jaw drops out of its socket.

It's...it's coastal New England. 

Let's backtrack here.  Little baby Claudia is a born-and-raised New Englander.  That means she likes the cold, flips people off in traffic, has to be everywhere in a hurry, and is a sucker for chowder of any and all varieties.  Little baby Claudia grew up vacationing on the New England coast.  Little teenaged Claudia grew up AUDITIONING on the New England coast.  Little grown-up Claudia grew up longing for vacations on the sandy white beaches she knew since she wore diapers- on the New England Coast.  Little Claudia lived in land-locked New England.  Coastal life was one of thsoe pretty dreams she enjoyed playing with on her few days of vacation with the sand squishing between her toes.

Big girl Claudia...now has an interview...on big girl Claudia's dream landscape. 

Big girl Claudia has somehow been granted this teeny tiny shot at living the dream that all of Claudia has embraced...being a musician, on the New England coast, happily married and living with her pets and future offspring in some cozy little nook not on the waterfront but in what coastal people call "sketchy" areas that are really anything but.  (I've lived in DC, people.  I have seen things that cannot be unseen.  Sketchy has a whole new dictionary.)  What exactly does big girl Claudia do after she accepts the interview on the phone?

She hangs up.  She smiles.  She chokes back a flashback of her last horrifying employment experience.

And she bawls.  Like a two year old who got their favorite toy ripped out of their hands.

Why?

Because she's...because I'm...afraid.

I just don't understand.  What does a pretty coastal town with a pretty "in-season/off-season" town website and pretty, privileged looking people, want with ME?  Me- the slightly awkward, severely damaged, overachieving attention whore of a musician who hasn't faced reality since the last time she got her nose, heart, and several other appendages broken by it?  Why, out of the thousands of candidates, pick me to make the trek out and put on a show for a panel that may have never seen a podunk hillbilly in their life?  What could I possibly offer high-class, coastal coin society, that someone with a fancy doctorate or pedigree or whatever, could not?  I don't have any more passion than I did when I started.  If anything, I have a lot less passion and a lot more caution.  I have a lot more insight and a lot less I want "out".  I have...battle scars.  What do they want....with me?

And is it a want I can trust?  What if they're calling me out there just...to laugh at me?  Just to see the poster child for what they could never want in their posh little town?  There's a laundry list of things they once preferred for this position- I'm close to some of those things, but hold none of the official achievements- I never got granted the chance.  Why aren't they asking why? 

I can't handle being disappointed one last time.  I'm temporarily relocating, away from my husband, to haul up in a hotel somewhere to see if this is where I'm meant to be.  He'll follow if I'm offered the job and I accept- but while it's still under interview circumstances, I'm flying solo.  One of us has to keep our bank account steady, after all.  I'll be interstate- far away from the home I took a year adjusting to, the psycho kitty that spoons between the sheets with us at night, and the man who saved my sanity when it exploded all over the wall from my last job.

I can't be let down any more.  I will seriously shatter.  I'm not talking Witch of the West meltdown- I'm talking Glinda of Gillikins spontaneous combustion of faerie glitter- and not the dust-away stuff, but the craft herpes sort of glitter- KAPOOIE!  This is not a carrot on a stick- this is a carrot cupcake with fondant and cream cheese frosting with a champagne center and a glass of Pinot Grigio.  You do not stick that shit in my face and then pull it away.  You're better off not sticking that shit in my face at all.  Don't offer me things I can't have.

Unless, of course, you really are willing to let me have it....and eat it too...

In which case...if that's the case...

Nah.  Better not get my hopes up.

Then again...a gourmet cupcake isn't outstretched to just ANYONE...right?

Gods.  Just please don't feed me any stupid lines about this place being my next "Mr. Holland's Opus", or the next Richard Dreyfuss movie I see in the bargain bin, I'm buying and having a bonfire over.  Just be real with me.  Just be straight with me.  Just don't lead me on to let me down.

And...if you want to offer me the position...well...I'm okay with that, too.
I'll be ecstatic if and when, but more if, the dream comes true.
For now...it's just a delusionary interview.

Background- A Mess of Words

Previous post apology.  Did I mention I fell into a vat of crazy five years ago?  I keep thinking that maybe that's the best explanation as to why I suddenly melted down into gooey, sensitive me. 

Here's the thing.  Five years ago, I met my husband- for the second time- during my end of college.  Three years ago, I got my first job in a building doing big-girl stuff that I got my big-girl degree for, with a big-girl salary and a big-girl benefit package, a big-girl apartment with gorgeous windows that faced the south and west and lit up my whole bedroom with sunlight every morning...I dealt with my fiancee's big-boy deployment to big-boy danger zone, I micromanaged teenagers, and I functioned on a little less than 4 hours sleep a night.  For two years.  In my second year at said big-girl job, a new boss came in.  And his job was to rip big-girl to teeny, tiny shreds.  And he did it overwhelmingly well.  The only victory I got out of sticking around was the ability to claim unemployment...because I was loudly informed that, if I quit, they'd make sure I didn't see a dime.  So I stuck it out and faced the abuse until, legally, it had to end- about a year ago.  The phone would ring off the hook- whether it was debt collectors looking for payments that I couldn't make any more or angry community members continuing their witch hunt. 

In any case, I still get nightmares about it.  I sense that those nightmares- and the flashbacks- may not go away until I get my next full-time job.  And I have to tell you, that is the most awful feeling in the world.  Today was a bad day for those flashbacks.  And nightmares.  I had two of each.  One while I was writing in this blog.  So now I feel compelled to explain it.  But I don't want to write about it- so I'll let one of my old saved files on my computer do it for me.  The excerpt reads as follows below.

About a month ago, I was seeing my bridal therapist...which is a story in and of itself, mainly because she was the second NON-crazy therapist I've ever talked to...but in the process of that, said therapist informed me that the path to happiness is paved with...well, telling your story before it eats you alive.  This was my reaction.
She tells me to write my story, to tell it out loud so everyone can see.  And I think to myself, why would anyone want to listen to a laundry list of situations where I've been victimized?  She tells me it's not about the victimization, but about the "gold nuggets within the shit".  That a lot of bad shit has happened, but there are little gold pieces in those piles of shit, and that those are what I need to dig out and polish- no matter how small.

I stayed when they wanted me to run.  When they egged me on to quit, I stayed.  I stayed because I wanted to collect unemployment, because I wanted to keep my apartment in the quiet rural town for as long as I could, because I needed my health insurance, and because I wouldn't be labeled a quitter.  I ran concerts, rehearsals, everything.  I doublechecked my paperwork, became hypervigilant, stayed up long, late hours loyally busting hump just to meet expectations.

It was out of my control- I probably knew it was too- and I did it anyway.  I was loyal to a fault.  I still am.  I still cheer for those students that make it through the program without me.  It isn't their fault that the town dropped a political nuclear bomb on me.  It isn't their fault that their parents ran me out of town, either.  It's not personal from them.  It's probably not even personal from staff, save for one.  They needed a place to put their aggression and they found it in me.  I'm sad for those students trapped in that political bombshell.  I'm sad for the program trapped in the same.  And I am still hurting from everything that happened.  But I was always loyal. 

I was always passionate.  I remained passionate to the day they showed me the door, walking out exclaiming, "You can't do this.  They have a spring concert.  You're choosing to hurt your students.  This isn't fair to them." 

I have an amazing sense of fairness.  If I'm wrong, I absolutely want to fix things- I tried very hard.  You can't fix issues that no one shows you, though.  And you can't fix the old "I just don't like you" bid either.  You can't change who you are.  I won't change who I am any more.  I may not know who I am really, but I do know that if I make a mistake, I make it loudly enough to encourage someone to show me where I went wrong. 

And I care.  A LOT.  About my mistakes.

But I'm done letting my mistakes define me.  To hell with perfection.  To hell with imperfection.  To hell with all of it.  I just am what I am.  You don't like it?  YOU can walk out that door from now on.  I've survived a teen pseudo-cult, a sexual assault, several narcissistic, self-serving therapists, 5 years of conservatory study in a sexist profession, a boss and job from hell, a major interstate move, two and a half decades of parents who will never be satisfied with my achievements, 2 international separations from the man I love, the demise of a nonprofit I put blood, sweat, and tears into, and an impressive amount of emotional abuse and manipulation from people I misguidedly placed my trust in.  A month from now, I'm getting married to a man who has stuck it out WITH me through 90% of those things I list up there.

I could care less if it's "happily ever after".  I'm completely fine with just "HAPPILY".

It turns into "ever after" once you realize that the first word is the only thing you need focus on.
Plus, take a look at that rap sheet.  If we can handle all that- we can handle being married.
And those of you that want to place doubt anyway- get lost. 


Yeah...that. 
So, for the record...PTSD isn't just for combat victims any more, I guess.

Today was a bad day.  Tomorrow will be a better one.  How do I know?
I don't.  At all, really.  But my husband just kissed my thigh, handed me the remote, and asked me if I wanted to lose myself in some music, or a cheesy movie. 


Sounds like "happily" to me.

Flashback

He was laughing, strung out to the edge of oblivion on macaroni-shaped pills.  And booze.  And just laughing.  He was a five year old in a forty year old man's body, kicking his heels against the floor in hysterics while the crystal chandelier swung ominously over his head.  The hors'd'ouerves platter on the mahogany table above him shook violently, splattering cream cheese filled celery stalks against the rug that looked like it had come from Arabian nights.  I wished I was two inches tall.  This- this was my father in law?  My husband turned to me with big hopeless eyes, begging my forgiveness.  Instead, I grasped his hand tightly and pulled him down the flight of stairs outside the house, running through the projects until we stumbled onto an old abandoned yard and flung ourselves onto each other.  Nothing else mattered when we were in each others' arms, anyhow.  While crystal clinked in the dining room of the old chateau and his father kicked and wailed like an infant, we rolled in the dying grass half naked and laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.  It was like hosting a grand ball in a cheese grater.  A total mindfuck.

Waking up from stuff like this often makes me wonder what it is my subconscious is trying to tell me.  I used to interpret dreams- a LOT.  I had books- shelves of them- on symbolic meanings and parallel universes and Tarot and all things mystical.  I still do.  They just seem to have acquired a lot of dust- not of the faerie kind.  I didn't have much time to shake myself out of this dream before the next one struck.

Fifteen people in suits, ties, and expensive three-piece powersuits awaited me in the back room of the retail building.  All older ladies and gentlemen, from all different walks of life.  My suit was polished- ironed, a stunning eggplant purple with a tight pencil-line skirt and a blazer that, when buttoned, kept the goods at bay, but when unbuttoned, put them out on full display.  It had been hot.  I drove to the interview in a gorgeous crimson Camero with the top down and the sun blazing.  I was too confident for an undershirt.  Now I was going in, clutching my blazer closed.  I couldn't let go of wanting to hide in it- terrified that one nip-slip would be enough to send me back to the board of unemployment.  The interview lasted for hours.  They asked me questions about things I didn't even know existed, and I stumbled for answers.  Once, they even asked me to do a demonstration of a sales pitch, and a bit of my naked stomach flashed them.  I was mortified but no one seemed phased at all.  Then it came time for the pressure test.  A man with big strong hands came over with a blood pressure cuff and asked me to check my blood pressure.  I asked him what the point of this was, and he said it was the standard final procedure before hire.  I wrapped the cuff carefully around my bicep, but my hands were shaking.  They pumped and pumped and pumped until I thought my arm would physically snap off.  Then there was a rush of air and a powerful release.  "165," repeated the heavyweight man holding my limp arm.  A round of "tsks" went through the room as the director thanked me for my time.  "But...I'm just a little nervous!" I began to protest.  "Try it again in a few minutes- I'm sure it's just a glitch!  I CAN do this.  Please, I need this job.  I need to work to be alive again."  The director nodded sympathetically, adding "I appreciate your candidness.  Perhaps we have an opening in the part-time division.  We could start you at minimum wage and work you on your way up."  My eyes flared with rage- this job was supposed to be full time, salaried, with benefits!  Instead, the voice that came out of my throat was desperate and grateful.  "Oh thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!"  What had I just done?  I left the room in tears and saw that I had just signed on for another few miserable years as a minimum wage slave doing nothing relative to my degree.  I got in my car and pulled the roof up- but the car had become too small for me now, and I barely squeezed into it.  It was pouring rain, but it didn't much matter anyway.  I walked into the Pizza Hut up the road and bought a scotch and a pizza burrito.  Another day of not being able to afford a normal life.  What a surprise.

Maybe I should explain.  I've been job hunting.  What I need is a full time job with benefits.  What I get is a whole lot less than that- and that's what I've BEEN getting since I lost my last full-time job.  That makes me feel inadequate.  I'm guessing that's where this dream comes from.  But there is another place.

It's deeply buried, and yet the soil is fresh and stinky.  Rooted in seeds of empty confidence and torn up dreams.  It's the dead body of what I thought was my career, decaying every minute I'm away from it.  I hate it, and yet, I want to dig it up and embrace it, filth and all, and reanimate the son of a bitch.  No one ever caught the murderer.  No one ever will.  Because it will always be acceptable, it seems, that society casts out one of its young hopefuls because a slightly older, more privileged person made that person's life hell within the boundaries of the law.

He didn't fuck me- he fucked WITH me.   He wrote me up for breathing loudly.  He wrote me up when I had to take sick days.  He tormented me with meetings where he would just berate me behind closed doors.  He'd torture me till I cried, and then I would get written up for reacting unprofessionally.  He murdered my dreams in cold blood and left them in a pile on the linoleum so that the people who got to watch the massacre could take turns pissing and spitting on the mound.  He chased me out of town with his band of witch hunters and then sent me to the stakes, where my therapist would later burn me alive and let me die all over again.

I don't trust authority figures any more.  I don't trust anyone most days.  I trust my husband on a complete fluke- a malfunction, a miswiring of the brain- and even then, that short-circuits.  I hate and despise anyone who has power over anything.  I don't mean to.  I just do.

Gods, am I still dreaming?  No...no, this is a flashback.  You remember these.  When you start reliving what happened to you at that job, right, Claudia?  It's over now, let it go, girl.  It's nobody's fault.  It wasn't personal.

THE HELL IT WASN'T PERSONAL.  IT WAS FUCKING PERSONAL.

You've got to learn to shut these things up, Claudia.  You've got to get a grip.  Get a grip or you'll never get your real life back.  Don't you want your normal, real life back?

I'm tired.  I'm so tired.  Fifty-seven applications.  No one gives a damn.

Come on.  It's the recession.  You know that- the whole country turns to shit every day.  You'll get a job.  Your husband believes in you.  Your family believes in you.  Get on board, will ya?

It's going to happen all over again.  And then I'll be a slave to some big corporation that will shit on me.  I'll live on welfare and spend twenty years fighting for a disability that isn't even real except for veterans.  Fuck.

Enough.  That's enough negative talk, now.  I can see your dreams have fucked you up quite enough for one day.  Your subconscious is signing off now.  Go do something that keeps your mind busy.

I guess I could go write...

The Feminazis Made Me Do It...

I struggle, greatly, with feminism.
Of course I have hinting suspicions that I'm paid less than the average male, looked at differently in the workplace, and otherwise told that pieces of my body are filled with sin and grotesque oozing matter.  But I just can't find it in my heart to tear open my shirt, beat on my beautiful breasts in triumph, and allow my vagina to roar at the injustice of the world.

Maybe that was a bit insensitive to my feminist friends.  I apologize.  Profusely.  I like what you do- it's just I can't stand how a large majority of you do it.  This post is going to be about that.  And it's going to be vulgar.  And you probably will be offended- and for what it's worth, I'm sorry- I'm gonna say it anyway.

But every group, no matter HOW good/empowering/well-intended, has its flaws- and its stereotypes.  No one is exempt.  And I am afraid I struggle with the stereotypical "feminazi" prototype the most.
Please do not misunderstand me.  Or put me in one of your "women boxes"- I can't fucking stand that.  I'm not a "self-loathing female", nor am I a woman who feels she needs to be "put in her place", nor am I trying to emulate some sort of 1950s model-trophy-wife thing.  But I'm also not a rip-roaring, sign-toting, loud female in jeans tossing menstrual blood around like a PETA fanatic and telling the government to keep its hands off my pussy.  These- are extremes- in both respects.  But I really, truly struggle with feminism.
The truth is, I DON'T see a lot of discrimination based on just my sex.  I see more discrimination based on my age, my shape, the size of my tits, whether I have an illness or not, what my every little flaw is- than I see discrimination for my extra X chromosome.  And you know what?  If wearing a low-cut shirt gets me an A on that final in that class that I can't seem to stay awake through, then so be it- use what you have- provided you're not lowering and debasing yourself. 

(It's not like I let the guy pet me, for crying out loud.  It was a V-neck shirt.  It puckered in the front, right where the cleave shot is.  The man likes tits- I get it.  I happen to like my tits quite a lot.  I don't mind showing them off and getting a little appreciation for the lovely lumps the Lord gave me.  He takes a few glances and I mysteriously get a few points higher on the final.  No one got hurt here.  He got his five minutes of frivolity and I didn't have to wiggle my juicy parts around like some drunken slut at a Girls Gone Wild party.  You use what you have.  It's not sick and submissive- it's smart.  Besides, if you had a pair of fine D cups, I bet you'd show them off once in a while, too.)

What did Eminem say in one of his raps?  "We ain't nothin' but mammals."  It's true.  We just happen to speak different languages and create societies and stuff.  We just happen to think we're important.  But WHAT is this race-to-the-top bullshit about?  Men got the better shake because their stupid nightmares got published in the Bible?  Men make more money because they're physically stronger and that somehow makes them better?  You get to have multiple orgasms, ladies.  You have as many legends in the millions of religions in the world as the men do in Christianity and Christian-based beliefs.  You ARE heard when you ask to be treated equally or there wouldn't be so many women at the top of companies today- entrepreneurs, managers, doctors, the list goes on.  Grow up and let go of your insecurities, women.  You have prowess and power.  It comes in a different form, a different package.  Quit trying to compensate for not having a penis and use your damned brain.  That's how your counterparts got to the top of their companies- I mean it. 

And please stop shoving your vaginal gloryholes in my face.  It's distracting and I just don't swing that pendulum.

I admit, I got a bad taste in my mouth doing women's empowerment things in my early twenties.  (Leave it alone, that's not what I meant.)  I found a community that embraced strengthening women and did lots of activities to support that.  I found people and mentors who encouraged me to think with my lady parts; embrace my lady parts; fight with my lady parts.  I did Kegels for cookies of self-empowerment.  I went to circles where women shared stories about reclaiming their identities and took new names and found new lives.  I meditated during my menstrual flows.  I embraced every time the full moon lined up with my cycle so strongly, in fact, that one night I did a ritual where I wrote myself a love letter scrawled in a mixture of red wine and my own menstrual blood.  You know what I got from that experience?

Messy. 

And my bedroom looked like a damn murder scene.

Look, I get it.  Your core feminine self is full of power.  Blood is magical.  Your vagina works in mysterious ways and it's a cavern of birth.  And maybe you don't love yourself enough because your mother didn't tuck you in at night, or somebody abused your beauty box, or society has somehow otherwise indicated to you that you're not special...you're disadvantaged.  But you are not.  And none of these rituals- however powerful they may be- are going to tell you that...until you tell that to YOURSELF.  In your OWN comfort zone.  I swear to you, no amount of menses-blood-writing will cause you to have that epiphany, no matter HOW many "om mani padme hums" you chant while doing it.

I learned this the hard way.  After months of women's empowerment books and carrying a massive chip on my shoulder through my male-dominated profession, I realized that the only thing I was turning into was a self-empowered, isolated...bitch.  "The System" was against me, "Society" was against me, and my mother ruined any chance I had at loving myself because she was Catholic and didn't love her body enough because she wouldn't reveal her innermost sexual desires to anyone and seemed not to ever be intimate with her husband.  Did it occur to me that my mother's privacy was part of what kept sex sacred to her?  No.  Did it occur to me that by distancing myself from "The System", I was just refusing to find a solution to the problem, or a fit for myself?  No.  I had taken my womanly self far too seriously- I had embraced my vagina so much that it practically swallowed me whole.  And I found, once inside this sticky, slimy metaphor...that I wasn't acting ANYTHING like myself.

So the "moon nights" stopped at my house.  The "embrace-your-feminine-power" books got shoved in the back of my closet.  I left the women's circle to the women who seemed like they still needed it.  And I started listening to the rest of the world, with ALL of its sides.  The black, the white, the grey, the purple, the...whatever.  And I realized that I had been fighting an imaginary demon.  No one was out to undermine me, no one was out to "get" me.  It wasn't personal.  It wasn't even anything beyond the dog-eat-dog competition I had suspected existed in society all along, regardless of sex. 

I must have disappointed my mentor every other day the week I decided to let go of this femiwisdom thing I had gone through.  I just "wasn't loving myself enough", or I was just hitting a "breakthrough- just stay with it".  But the breakthroughs were breaking me.  I had hurt my mother's feelings over half a dozen times- suggesting she was frigid, ruthless, etc...when perhaps there was an entirely different reason she acted the way she did sometimes.  It would take me five years to learn some of those reasons.  It would take a few strange moments dressing on my wedding day to discover that being a woman- a powerful woman- means embracing it all...even your inner man.  (Yep.  I went there.)

So when someone asks me to stand up for women's rights, I nod and I smile.  I don't disagree that we have to protect ourselves...just as much as a man has to protect himself.  You can go out and have your rallies about how women have the right to choose and use birth control, and I'll pump a fist in the air in your honor...from my stance in the crowd of men too ashamed to admit they've been sexually assaulted because "that doesn't happen to men".  You can tell me that I need to meditate and vibrate my vagina, and I'll thank you for the suggestion- but it's more likely that I'll go home and make love to my husband.  And be on bottom, because that's where it feels the best- not because I'm sickly "oppressed".  And moon rituals are nice- but they're bloody.  And I really don't like blood.  Nor do I much like it when that thing between my legs bleeds.  I'm sure pregnancy and motherhood is wonderful, but I still think menses suck- even if I do get an uncanny ability to predict things for several days during my cycle.

I'm a woman in a male-dominated profession.  I like it here.  But I don't pretend to have a big thick cock in my pants, and I don't shove my tits in anyone's face, either.  I won't gyrate on your groin for a job and I won't string you out in a lawsuit for casting an occasional eye on the fullness of my breasts.  I'm just a woman.  With plenty of drive.  With plenty of feminine charm and wile and a heart like an ox.  I'm a passionate sunuvabitch.  I'm tacky.  I drink beer and curse like a sailor, and I like a little kink in my drink, if you catch my meaning.  I also slip into pencil skirts and stockings with seams and high heels that could stab your testicles like shish kabob.  I played with Barbies and I played with dolls.  I tease.  I look at other women and think they're beautiful- the same as I do with men.  I like being a housewife who cooks and cleans- but I also like being the lady in charge at work, who comes home and demands the pants in the relationship.  And my husband likes both of those quirks.  I'm fat and fluffy and sentimental, but I can still lay a punch and break a jaw if you ask me whose cock I sucked to get here.  And I might be slightly more squishy than most.  I am a woman.


But believe me, that's hardly all.

The Bath

It's 9 o'clock at night.  My husband has had what we call an "off" day in the summer scheme of the wheel of the year, and so he lies down in bed, sleeping- albeit fitfully.  He's troubled- I know this.  It's not his favorite month.  It would be rather challenging for anyone to find favor with a month where one witnessed a terrible tragedy.  Unfortunately, it's also my birth month.  Getting my needs met is something I tend to focus on during the other eleven months of the year.  This particular month, troubling him in any way doesn't seem to help either of us- and now that we are married, I am particularly eager to avoid crashing and burning our marriage, only two weeks new.

I creep away to the crawlspace of a bathroom in our one bedroom squeeze of comfort and quietly shut the door.  In the rollaway closet, I locate my old, dear friends.  Bubble bath.  Luxuriant shampoo.  Sugar scrubs.  Candles.  Tub pillow.  Books on Mother Moon.  It's not that I feel they have to hide- it's just that they are shy around the man I cuddle with- or maybe that's the other way around.  Either way, bath time has always been my time- time for me- to get away from the things that are cluttering my headspace.

Ghost lingers playfully in the front of the shelf of my stashed treats.  A shiny, silky smooth white bubble bath from LUSH reminiscent of spooks, it's my go-to-goo when I'm feeling invisible but don't want to trouble others with actually being present.  Out it comes.  Homemade sugar scrubs filled with agave nectar, honey, and thick pats of sugar hide in a small cardboard box nearby- failed art projects of mine that didn't make the cut to "professional enough to give to your friends"- look good enough, so I dig them out.  Soon my cozy bathtub has become a small spa...Ghost bubbles up with an iridescent glow and I watch the sugar crystals from my scrub bars begin to moisten as the heat in the room rises.  My shell bath pillow, secured snugly to the back tile wall, draws my eye around to a coconut hair scrub I haven't used in a while, and some apricot facial cream that I use to give my cheeks a treat.  Armed and dangerous, I plunge inward.

I wasn't much of a "bath kid" as a child.  When I was 6 or 7, I used to take baths with my brother, who was much younger.  By the time I hit 9 or 10, I received encouragement from my mother that baths were just "swimming around in your own filth"- I became a shower girl pretty quickly after that.  Somewhere in my early twenties, I rediscovered the bathtub as a sanctuary of sorts.  I think I can remember the precise day, in fact.  I was out at a function, directing high school students at a sporting event, in blistering cold weather.  I lived up north where it wasn't unusual to see temperatures dip below zero, or have sweat freeze to your brow.  Topping the record cold that evening came something between sleet and snow- ice pellets.  Four hours watching a game while God's zamboni dumped its ice turds on my head was enough.  I was raw, cold, and sore.  We were due for a nor'easter that evening, but no one seemed smart enough to cancel the game- and of course, it didn't matter anyway- this was no school night.  After bundling the last kid off home to his folks after the game, I climbed in my car and donned gloves just to touch my steering wheel.  The 20 minute commute from the field to my lonely 3rd floor apartment in the middle of nowhere suddenly seemed like a three hour tour.  My bones actually hurt from the cold, and my mind was reeling from the week I had at school.  I trudged up the stairs to my apartment, shaking off the damp ice that covered my hat, gloves, scarf, coat, sweater, and heavy boots.  I draped everything over the railing outside my door, closed it, and locked it tight.  This was the first night in a long while I had prepared my apartment to be above the temperature it was outdoors- I usually prefer the cold.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I decided I needed to do something nice for myself if I was going to go it alone on a Friday night with the possibility of being snowed in the next morning.  I drew a bath, filled it with bubbles, and lit half a dozen candles.  I let myself climb in and sink beneath the water.  I might have even cried.  It was a rough and tumble year for me and I had found myself in a nanook-of-the-north corner of the world, teaching to a town that didn't know how to listen, in a place where no one knew who I was...including me.  Bathtime became a fall and winter ritual those next two years- a retreat from the bitter cold reality I seemed to face on a daily basis.

Now, amidst the lilac-scented bubbles in my porcelain tub, I stir at the thought and smile at the peace those moments brought me...how easy it was to slip into the bath and forget everything else except yourself, warmth closing around you, feeling weightless, but safe...they say bathtime is like a return to the womb.  Maybe that's why my mother was repulsed by it.  I can't say I blame her- I don't particularly cherish the idea of once being encased in amniotic fluid and placental discharge- I don't care how sacred all the "real women" of the world think it is.

No, I'm here because of a completely different reason, I think to myself.  This is the place I go when I need to reclaim myself.  When I feel lost and yet know my place.  This is where I go to unthink.  This is where my anxiety drains itself, where my childhood forgets its traumas, where my adolescence is not so loud and mindfuckerish- where my dreams make sense and my feelings just are.  It's not because any of those things might be wrong or missing...it's because I need them all to be just that way, just right now. 

Oh, like you're making any sort of sense, Claudia.  Pull it together.  This is your second blog post- no one knows your crazy cult history, your sexual assault survival, your not-your-average-joe-life-experiences.  Right.  I forgot.  Next time.

It's getting hot in here.  Hot like a sauna.  I'm discovering that heat is, in fact, uncomfortable at prolonged lengths, and my skin begins to redden and my pores open with sweat.  I suddenly have a powerful urge to relax in a pile of popsicles.  Bathtime is over.  The drain sucks out the mess in my head and bones as I stand, more relaxed, and step onto the green towel beside the tub.  The bubbles from my bath, still teeming with life, settle against the edges of the tub, reminding me that their spirited presence was both necessary and affirming.  I dry myself off and rub my hands with aloe cream.  I'm not sure what I've learned here tonight, but I know what I've unlearned.

My husband still lies sleeping in his same position, huddled fetally against our smoke-colored cat...who in turn, huddles against him.  The air conditioning blows a pleasant breeze through the room.  He breathes more deeply now, and as I reach to touch his shoulder, I feel the muscles beneath my fingers relax.  He is peaceful and responds gently to my touch- just as he did the first day he touched me.  I smile in spite of myself as a single word comes to my mind- patience.  Patience is what makes all the difference.

That, and a nice bath.