Defense

Calling my mother is like playing Plinko on the Price Is Right.  A contestant places a wooden disk at the top of the board and watches it fall in a random pattern, bouncing haphazardly between the Love/Support and Batshit Crazy slots.  There is a whole manner of additional available prizes, but they generally fall in between those two categories.  The player’s heart leaps when the piece looks to be headed toward Maternal Warmth only to sink in dismay when it makes a last second detour to Sicilian Guilt.  The outcome waits to reveal itself even to the final moments, as she answers the phone the same way, no matter her mood.

Mother’s Day was no exception.

“HELLO?!” she accused into the phone, leaving me to guess at the direction our chat would take.   To judge by her tone, anyone would think that she couldn’t possibly be more annoyed, that even correcting the grammatical errors of the entire population of Facebook would be preferable to taking my call.  That’s not really the case…it’s just how she rolls.

Knowing her tone is no indication of her mood, I chirped a cheerful Happy Mother’s Day  (!!) into the receiver and was rewarded with a couple of cold responses.  Under normal circumstances (and to save my own sanity) I will beat feet to the end of the conversation when I see it headed in this direction.  If I don’t, screaming matches occur; it’s better to live to fight another day than engage, logic has no place when her voice takes on a certain edge.  But, it WAS Mother’s Day, and as such (I felt), required a bit of extra effort on my part.

After some prying and coaxing (“Seriously, what’s the matter? Why do you sound so hateful today?”) I was rewarded with a solid dose of the truth.

Now, here I pause to tell you something else about my mother.  I’ve shared some shitty things about her on this blog.  Told a couple of horror stories.  Mostly because this seems to be where I work some crap out.  But, beyond those stories, it should also be known that she’s a woman dealing with her own shit.  A really smart fucking woman, dealing with her own shit.  I forget sometimes that she’s spent a considerably longer amount of time trying to figure herself out and get back to even than I have, and as such, has the benefit of experience.  Every once in a while, she pops out with something that sounds completely ridiculous, but turns out to be exactly what I needed to hear at that particular moment.  It’s those times that I know I’m just as Batshit as she is and that there will never be anyone out there who understands quite like she does.  This fact absolutely has TNT written all over it, but sometimes when it manifests, it’s the only thing in the world that helps me know I’m not alone.

This was one of those times.

“I’m not a goddamned business, Jennifer.”

Now, the layperson will read that line and wonder:  “What the fuck does that even mean?!”  But I’m no novice when it comes to my Mom.  I knew exactly what she was talking about.  I’d just spent the previous five-or-so minutes in a state of calm detachment, trying to figure out why she was upset.  My voice had been soft and clear, friendly even, but there was no warmth behind it.  I’d been giving her the fake customer service treatment, and she called me out.  I was instantly fighting back tears.  She knew, goddamn it.  She knew and saw right through.

I use my call center voice when I’m in danger of feeling something.  I use it when I’m perilously close to submitting to weakness.  When I’m so lonely for the touch of the person I’m speaking to that going another moment without it might drive me to desperation; the emptier my soul, the more cordial my voice.  Without that failsafe, that tone modulation, the outside world is in danger of falling victim to the dam breaking.  I’d just been using it on her and she failed to play along, instead, forcing me to recognize something about myself that had (has) become my entire world lately.

There I was, face-to-face with the truth of my coping mechanisms.

These days, I am detachment embodied.  I have shut myself down to only the bare minimum.  Essential systems only.  Reserve power.  Low lighting.  Martial law.  I have declared a  moratorium on the expression of, well, anything.  I live so teeteringly close to a breakdown that I must maintain a state of hyper-vigilance lest this wound opens only to bleed and bleed and bleed.

I have become so careful about how I express myself that I don’t express myself at all.  My closest relationships have withered off of once healthy vines.  My need and drive to write has dried up because in its honesty, it would be admitting to the lies I’ve been telling those around me.  I have no shortage of hands reaching toward me, but I’m afraid they have no idea what they’re offering; that once I give in and let go, allow myself to be comforted by those hands, that they’ll realize the extremity of my need and retreat, sorry at once that they’d offered any contact at all.

In truth, my inner world is a blustering chaos.  I don’t jest when I say that out loud.  It’s more than just a warning or humorous hyperbole.  As my skin screams out for contact, tenderness, soft words, I breathe those desires back inside.  Their ferocity isn’t to be meddled with, and I don’t trust the outstretched and open palms to know what they’re offering.  With certainty I know that once I open that door, that cut, there will be no stanching the flow.  And while I fully expect and understand that those offering aid will retract it once they see the truth in the outpouring, I also know that that abandonment is something I can never recover from.

So I keep to the inside and play my grand role.  With abiding grace, I am thankful for the kindness of the people that reach out.  I am quietly awed by their intentions and charity.  But I must, at all costs, maintain this distance; a break in the ranks could mean a break in my tanks, the reserves, what’s left of this crumbling edifice.  It’s not enough to know that she sees me, my Mother.  Not enough to just be revealed.  All I am at that point is revealed, uncovered.  There is no protection in the open, and in the end, just being found out is not the same as being understood.

Out! Out! Damned Spot!! (R11#1)

One Word:  Encapsulate the year 2011 in one word.  Explain why you’re choosing that word.  Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2012 for you?

 

 

I came very close to blowing off this post.  Skipping it.  Or at least putting it off until tomorrow…without genuine intention to pick it up again.  There was a list, a bunch of “WHYs” and, at the top, the reality of my recent state of mind.  The spinning, whirling mess and the endless drop to the bottom.    I remembered last year’s journey and how my mostly one-sided musings circled the same two or three topics…30 days of endless loop, staring at each thing from all angles and shining the light of 360 degree surveillance on them in hopes of coming to some manner of clarity.  Some days I was rueful, others sardonic, but mostly I was optimistic: hopeful for brighter days ahead and certain that I’d taken something from those experiences to guide me forward.  It turns out those December days were postcards from the edge.

Looking down at the things circling the bowl labeled 2011, I wondered seriously if they were the types of things I should be sharing out loud.  I imagined the pity party and the well-intentioned “We’re All In This Togethers”.  Imagined post after post of maudlin mental vomit and then the subsequent nose-dive of friends and followers; people fleeing the scene of the crash to keep out from under the swirling black cloud that’s been plaguing me.

But the stark reality hit not long into The Making-Of-Excuses and I jolted to and began typing:  My bread is buttered one way only, and that is with a blunt knife.  My niche, you see, is the truth.  The Self Truth. The uncensored description of the crazy that I keep in my closet.    Why on earth would I start keeping secrets now?   I’m not published, or accomplished or professional.  I don’t have a book, or an idea for a book or a million followers.  What I do have, what I’m not lacking, is my truth and the lantern I shine on it, and I fancy that’s what keeps the few readers coming back. In the end, I may not know what’s going to come out of my mouth next, but I do know that it’s going to be as close as I can get it to The Big T.

So FUCK IT!, I say.  Fuck it, and let’s see what comes out in the wash.  In for the penny, in for the pound, and kids, Mama’s got some shit to get off her chest.

So with that, you should know that my word for 2011 is MELANCHOLY.  I had some amazing experiences and saw some extraordinary things.  I laughed out loud and fought even louder.  I took leaps and made efforts and conquered smoking (Adieu, Parliament Lights!)  But over it all, clouding the lens, peeing in my cereal, was my old friend Depression.  She’s camped out even now in the deep recesses: over a table and under a bare fluorescent bulb, wearing green fatigues and smoking those Parliaments…planning her next guerrilla attack.  Over the next 30 days, if last year is any indication, I’m going to be introducing her to you, so here’s your fair warning.  She walks around with a half-empty bottle of vodka and no makeup, and most of the time she forgets to shower.

Last year, I wanted Renaissance, but got instead, rain my parade.  I’ll be damned if I let that bitch squat where she is for another 365.  This year?  2012?  Light.  Let there be light.

Please.

If Only It Were That Simple….

 

Author Dan Andrews wrote a prompt for the Trust 30 challenge that I don’t find to be much of a prompt at all.  It was kind of a self help book boiled down to a couple of paragraphs.  Regardless, I signed on, and certainly don’t want to cop out.  As such, I took a portion of The Prompt and realized I already had something in the archives that I wanted to say about it.

 

In regards to the kind of person I want to be, I have the following to say:

I want quiet–quiet in my head;

a hush when I close my eyes.

I want to lay my head down and drop to sleep without the agony of the day’s playback on repeat.

I want to feel effortlessly kind, and less a fraud.

I want buoyancy in place of the lead weight in my chest which I think must be my heart.

I want to sigh in contentment at this day’s end, and, instead of rancid ennui, look to the next with optimism and genuine curiosity.

I want pleasing things to feel pleasing, and I want to look at my world with real and unclouded joy.

Alice? More like the Mad Hatter.

I’ve just returned from an interview at Kennewick City School District.  It was short and sweet and I’ve come away with a job as a substitute para-educator.  No twisted knickers please, I had to look that one up myself…it means Fill-In Heartbeat.  Extra Body.  Chaperone.

I am, Dear Reader, a hurricane of thought right now, and am truthfully having a helluva time sifting through it all.  It’s well-documented that, aside from tutoring, I am sans employment.  I’m also at an employment intersection where I can continue on straight or veer hard right into the barrio.  A super smart lady once told me:  “Jennifer, it’ll work, or it’ll work.”  I keep repeating that to myself as I face the polarity in my head.

1.  There’s a certain amount of self-loathing that goes along with being jobless.  What am I WORTH to anyone sitting around my apartment all day, blogging and working on my fitness?  To an outsider, that might sound like a little bit of heaven, but I’ve got news kids:  If I was going to be a kept women, there would have to be OODLES more jewels and private beachfront involved.  Trust.  I am contributing a big, fat goose egg to the world right now, and that looms large.  Towering, even.

2.  Stagnant Credits Column = Plummeting self-esteem.  Ima be real whichall for a second….I very much gauge my own success by salary and the increasing importance of the positions I’ve held.  My advancement since college has been textbook, an upsweeping curve of remuneration, responsibility and expertise.  I was proud of my last job.  Proud of its scope and its stress level.  I earned my salary there, and was salaried well.  Historically, it was very difficult to keep a position there for any period over a year.  Factor in my womanhood, and that period decreased to around 6 months.  I was really kind of awesome at it.

Taking this position means a lopping-off-at-the-knees of all of the above.  It’s requirements were a GED and a heartbeat.  (Although they DID request a college transcript)  I haven’t checked the mall lately, but I’m fairly certain that I could make as much folding a week’s worth of boatnecks at The Gap.  This job means quite a few leaps back toward BEGINNER and away from BIG GIRL.  It’s a blow to my ego, for sure.

3.  The Unknown = Unsettling Pit In My Stomach.  I like a sure thing.  A plan.  Contingencies.  I like knowing what to expect and to be prepared for it.  Stress goes notoriously hard on me, and I’ve learned, over and over, that an Adapted Jen’s Intestinal Tract functions much closer to normal than a Where-The-Fuck-Did-THAT-Just-Come-From Jen’s Intestinal Tract.  Operations is all I’ve known for the past 10 years.  See problem?  Solve problem.  It’s my jam.  Why do I want to go and mess with something I’m pretty damn good at in order to search for something I haven’t yet fully identified?

4.  Fulfilled = Zen Jen.  I hated it more than I loved it.  And I can’t say I ever really loved it.  It fed my ego, absolutely.  Being GOOD at something was like an E pill for my inner self.  A mellow roll for my soul.  It felt GOOD to make more than the Old Man.  Felt good to be more educated and better employed than most people in my private life.  I was silently superior.  I would never lord it over someone, but I was definitely privately glad to NOT be them.

Yuck, right?  Who wants to be THAT girl?  Always after thinking and feeling those things, I’d hate myself a little.  When a high point in your day is being able to tow someone’s car, it’s time to evict the Soul Sucker and move on.  I don’t know what happy is and I don’t know where to look for fulfillment.  But I’m certain THAT wasn’t IT.  Something is needling at me, and it’s being pretty insistent, a gentle and repetitive tug somewhere back there in the Deep Me.  I know there’s something there.  I know that it’s amazing and I know where NOT to look.  On some days, that’s more than enough. On others, that Unknown creeps right in and takes over.

5.  The Right Time = Now.  When the Old Man made the executive decision to move us here, I was comforted by three things.  The first was the fact I’d get to take an extended vacation at home and on the beach.  The second was the fact that I’d put a cap on it at 2 years FIRM and that was a duration I could endure.  The third was knowing that the Old Man would be making enough money so that I could take some time to find a job that lit my fire.  Well, I’m a year in, and this education thing is growing on me.  It’s time to figure it out.  This job may be low low low in the expertise column, but it will give me time in a classroom, with students.  It’s an opportunity for me to observe and absorb.  I can think of better places than here, but I can’t figure a better time than now.

So, of course, I’m taking it.  I’m going to ‘orientation’ (*sigh*) tomorrow and I’m told I can start working as soon as Thursday.  My hopes aren’t high–they can’t be when an interview is only 3.5 minutes long–but they are there.  This could be a dead end…or the door to the room where I finally come upon a sleeping Meant To Be.

Pft…Everything’s (not) OK

The Prompt:

What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead? (Author: Kate Inglis)

Oh! to be the girl with the forever smile; to rid myself of the deep wrinkles between my eyebrows and greet the world daily with composure and grace….  Everything, you see, is decidedly NOT okay in my world.  My default face is consternation and my stomach? A mass of knots and bile.  I’m the first born, an Aries, weighed down in reality and anchored by responsibility.  For every third person professing that “things will just work out” there is one of me, toiling behind the scenes, knowing that IT WILL NOT! and pulling the strings to avert disaster.

I KNOW, to my very base fiber, that it is best to expect the worst and to be prepared for the next shower of bullets.  I am a naysayer, a doomsday portent, a harbinger of reckoning.  For every small beauty, for every sigh of pleasure and each belly laugh, there are scores of needling sorrows raining down to remind of the natural balance.  I know this empirically, with the certainty of experience.  I have a closet full of the “other shoes” and a face full of contusions from their rapid descent.

“Alright” is a relative term, you see.  It’s Above Ground, Still Breathing, Possessed of All My Fingers and Toes.  To be any other way would be completely foreign.  Foreign, but completely longed for.  I am consistently amazed by people who are able to keep to the sunny side: My brother N, who, while paratrooping his way through Afghanistan can maintain that we are all a part of the fabric of time, that the universe has a plan and that plan is right and purposeful.  My girlfriend M, who, though mucking her way through a divorce and other painful decisions is devoted to her smile with a buoyancy that’s terribly rare.  Even CV, who has recently defriended me, never ceased to amaze me with her ability to remain civil in situations that would have me in jail for assault.

I am simply not that person.  I am wed to the Truth (big T) and prefer cold, hard FACT to wishful thinking.  I know that the winds will change direction if I get too comfortable.  I feel, so heavily, that somehow, my life is a crux on which teeters a scale of good and bad.  To feel differently, or to change my attitude, is to tempt fate and laugh at the Furies.  Because it is so, I feel more acutely the joys of success and the pains of failure.  I am keenly cognizant that good is only so because of its counterpart, bad.

So, you see, I am not acquainted with that sigh of relief,  that notion that, wow, things are finally on an upswing.  I know only to breathe in those winsome moments, and breathe through the terrifying.  All are fleeting, and each makes way for the next.

the first step’s a doozy!

The first post is always the worst, so let’s get this out of the way shall we?  Maybe you’ve stumbled upon me by accident or been sent here by a friend, I guess it doesn’t matter.  The things I write here are bound to be intensely personal and telling, making you question why I’d say them out loud in a public forum at all.  The truth is:  I have no shame.  I am unapologetic at best and completely insensitive at worst.  I write to hash things out, to leave my mark, to express opinion, and, to an ultimate degree, to connect with the world around me.

I’ve been, for as long as I can remember, overwhelmed by the need to fit in, to belong to the world around me: to be cherished and valued and needed.  This need has evolved over the years, and I find that though I’m still plagued with it, I no longer indulge it by changing who I am for the court of public opinion.

I am who I am, fuck it.  I generally like me.  I find me funny.  And witty.  And smart.  (and unforgivably dumb).  I recognize my clumsy stumbling and my angry transgressions.   I have an inflated sense of justice and truth is the cornerstone on which I place all my apples–any failing of mine begins and ends there, with either too much or not enough truth.

Here, I will record the world as I interpret it, and be honest about my judgements and predjudices.  I am a bad liar, and prone to snap judgements…the good thing is, I change my mind a lot.  I invite you to hang on and follow me.  Maybe I’ll change your mind, or you’ll change mine.  Either way, I don’t particularly care, as long as I’m able to just GET OUT THERE.