Behind The Eyes

Two Songs, Same Message

2012-01-14T13:37:00.008-06:00

My current anthem:

(here's link to Flo's video, but I'm not particularly impressed by it, so I opted for this "video" which is just the song with the lyrics. Also, I think it makes it easier to connect the lyrics and the song, rather than having the video and the lyrics posted below.)

Last week, I finished the last third of Lauren Weisberger's Chasing Harry Winston, a chick lit book by the author of The Devil Wears Prada that TyRoy gave me. (Big Army guy loves chick lit. Go figure.) Not to bash chick lit, but I really didn't expect to have any epiphanies from a chick lit novel. But I was wrong.

To be fair, it started with one of my guilty pleasure tv shows, The Vampire Diaries, when two characters full of not very well disguised but kinda forbidden longing for each other finally kissed.

But, later that same night, while reading the section of the book where the character, who's engaged to the 'perfect man' though she doesn't really love him, has a night of passion with a man she works with. Since this is a chick lit book, of course her and the man she works with are together by the end of the book. But I realized that, now, like a light switch turning on, I wanted a 'real' relationship, that I wanted something more than a fuck-buddy. Recently, I had said that I didn't want a LTRR because I wasn't in a place emotionally to handle one, and I also wasn't as financially independent as I would like to be when entering one. Also, in my most recent experience, and quite a few others, "looking for heaven, I found the devil in me," and I wan't quite sure I'd dealt with that devil yet. All that was true when I said it and all good reasons to put off pursuing one right now. Actually, those things are still true. It's just now I'm willing to take the risk that those things will interfere for the payoff that I might have something great, even if it isn't lifelong, like my relationship with TyRoy. "But what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me." At this exact moment, I'm not actively pursuing anyone, in general or specifically, through dating sites or by flirting with people I meet, but I won't turn away opportunities that present themselves.

Just a couple of nights ago, to clear up some of the lyrics I wasn't quite sure of, while listening to "Shake It Out," I looked up the lyrics. Then, I listened to the song two or three times before I continued on with the rest of the album. And I listened to it on repeat before my shower Friday, also after my shower, but we aren't there yet.

While singing along, thinking about they lyrics, I couldn't help but be reminded of things with Moneypenny. "It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone." As I've said in a previous post, even though we've transitioned back to 'only friends' territory, and I live quite far from him and we haven't seen each other since he began an exclusive relationship with his current girlfriend, I seem to be causing strife in his current relationship, though I am trying as hard as I can not to. Honestly, I'm not really sure our friendship is very satisfying for either of us right now, though he can ignore that while his time is filled with a busy work schedule, his girlfriend, his hobbies, and his long-time friends. It's a bit harder for me when he doesn't answer texts or emails and has to frequently cancel the one phone call appointment we might have per week. Guess I naively thought he'd always be around as much as he was when he was 'courting' our renewed friendship, but you know how it is, once you have something, you don't have to work for it anymore. "And given half the chance, would I take any of it back?" Maybe my expectations are skewed. TyRoy has had a girlfriend who he loves and is monogamish with for over a year, though much of that time has been long-distance. He doesn't text or talk on the phone with me, as he doesn't like to do either and he says his phone gets shitty reception where he lives. He has 'classes,' which, as it's the Army, I expect are more full day classes than, say, a typical college undergrad load, plus homework and he often plays intramural sports or works out. But we typically have one long email exchange a day and sometimes a few one or two liners. As for Moneypenny, weeeeelllllll, he often responds to texts during the day while he's at work, but that's about it. I try not to text in the evening unless I know he isn't with his girlfriend as I don't want to stir up shit. No responses to emails. Takes forever to read my blog posts and never comments on the blog. I might talk to him on the phone once a week, if I'm lucky, but, well, things always get in the way. Now, I'll probably sound like a total hypocrite to many of my current other friends, almost all local, who I don't talk to very much and have cancelled on many times, though many of them I do keep up with through facebook-stalking. My excuse would be that, with the ups and downs of the bipolar and the meds, I don't have the attention span or the ability to do things on a schedule that most face to face friendships require. Though I realize that's an excuse, not a reason, and I hope to be better at that soon.

Then, while I was in the shower, trying to find other songs to sing in between listening to Flo's "Shake It Out," this oldie but goody popped into my head:

(No video options with lyrics. I'll post lyrics below it, but, seriously guys, who can't understand what this guy is saying?)

Walking Away-Clint Black

Walkin' away, I saw a side of you
That I knew was there all along.
And that someday I'd say good-bye to you
'Cause one right can still make two wrongs.
Not for each other, not from the start
The diff'rence was day and night.
My finest hour was spent here with you in the dark,
Was just before I saw the light.

It's the people who want love and the people who need love
Who find love on the way.
I'll be looking for someone 'til I find the right one,
Then I won't be walking away.

Now that I know what I'm tryin' to find
There's only one place it could be.
So I'm lookin' ahead, I've stopped looking behind
For someone who's lookin' for me.

It's the people who want love and the people who need love
Who find love on the way.
I'll be looking for someone 'til I find the right one,
Then I won't be walking away.

Maybe it's just that this theme is so universal that there should be two songs so different that pop into my head at the same, two songs that I have loved since the first time I heard them. Gram would argue that it's a sign. Mom would say that you know when you're ready to leave, that you can't force it before then because it won't last. And TyRoy keeps asserting that there are good men (and women) out there that I can have rewarding LTRRs with, if I'm willing to try and willing to lose. I think they're all right.

"I'm always dragging that horse around....All of his questions such a mournful sound. Tonight I'm going to bury that horse in the ground....I am through with my graceless heart so tonight I'm going to cut it out and then restart."

Or at least I might.

Though mine is on a blue background, this is the shirt I was, co-incidentally, wearing while dancing and singing to Flo's song after my shower, bought at last Urge show I went to with Moneypenny. How (Alanis Morissette) ironic. But, yeah, looks like my devil sometimes does to me, except mine has breasts.

Am I a 'Meredith'? (Not about Grey's Anatomy)

2012-01-10T20:36:00.008-06:00

Hello gentle readers. Welcome to another post of your beloved author working out her issues through typing.

Regular readers are probably already well aware of my views on monogamy, but I'll repeat myself for those who don't. In my life, I've never been very good at staying faithful in relationships. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started to accept and explore the idea that, perhaps, not all Long-Term Romantic Relationships (hereafter referred to as LTRRs) have to also be monogamous as well. Sex and love advice columnist Dan Savage, who I've read faithfully for over a decade, often advises those that write to him about alternative relationship arrangements, including lately talking much about "monogamish" relationship arrangements. Several years ago I read Stephanie Koontz's Marriage, A History, which, among other things, asserts that the ideal of a monogamous marriage is a relatively recent development, historically speaking. And just this weekend, I read this interview on Huffington Post with the author of a book about men and fidelity in LTRRs. If you read to the end of the piece, the author manages to get past what seems like a 'boys will be boys' apologist attitude and includes the fact that, though it is not what this particular book is about, women also cheat for many of the same reasons as men, in many of the same ways, and he doesn't necessarily believe that their "extradyadic," (a [made up by the author?] word meaning outside [extra] the relationship of only two [dyadic] people) relationships should end their primary LTRR either.

So, of course, I found it interesting Monday when, listening to the afternoon program of an alternative station in a town I have lived in (not saying I currently live there now), the main DJ Lazlo, his sidekick Slimfast, and their board operator Meredith discussed a series of events that happened to/involved Meredith over the previous weekend. Here's a link to the audio of the full 15-minute conversation (it's the 3rd on down, labelled "Meredith is not the type you take home to Mom"), though I'll provide the background and the main story, I've transcribed the last five minutes or so, which is what I find most interesting.

Background: So Lazlo is in his 40s, married, been with the same woman for several years, used to be wild alcoholic and do drugs but is clean now, has one child from a previous relationship and one child in his current marriage. Slimfast is in his late 20s or early 30s, about the same age as I am, recently got married to his girlfriend of a few years, and the two men now often talk about life as married men. Meredith is their board operator who pops up in the show, is in her early 20s, still pretty wild, lives with her boyfriend of a few years who they call 'The Ewok.' The story they discuss in the first ten minutes or so of the segment is that, over the weekend, while her boyfriend was out, Meredith made out with a female friend of hers who was visiting, after a long, deep conversation about the value of their friendship. It happened unexpectedly and Meredith didn't believe it was a big deal because, early in their relationship, her boyfriend had said that he didn't care if she kissed other women, as well as the non-logic that, since he wanted a threesome, he shouldn't care if she kissed other women, whether he was there or not. Meredith told her boyfriend that this happened, it seems in a rather nonchalant way, when he came home, and he's been a bit unhappy ever since, though he hasn't shared any particular feeling with Meredith. The men assert that it is because he feels that she cheated on him by doing this, that he probably assumed that the relationship had progressed to a point where it was exclusive. Meredith does not exactly see it that way, though she does say that if he does think it was cheating, she will apologize and not do it again.

On a side note: I am not sure how Meredith identifies her sexuality. When the men say that if they were her boyfriend, they might be worried that all her kissing of other women and previous sexual experiences with other women might mean she was gay thus why would she need them, she asserts that she is not gay. I am not going to label her sexuality for her. I will just say that I never assert that my bisexuality means I think I am entitled to be romantically or sexually involved with men and women at the same time, and many bisexual find it offensive when others think they feel that way. When I express a desire for an open relationship, it is not because I am bisexual and I do not believe that my problems with monogamy are because I am bisexual. Now, plenty of couples in arranged non-monogamous relationships only allow their partner to be with other partners that are of the sex they are not in situations where one or both of the partners are bisexual, but that is not the only way that bisexuals have relationships.

After all my long-windedness, here is the section of the conversation that really interests me, which starts about ten minutes into it. In this mostly monologue, emphasis are mine, Lazlo asserts that the problem is really with the "kind of girl Meredith is":

Meredith is not the kind of girl you move in with. She's never gonna be the kind of girl you date seriously. She's never gonna be the kind of girl you marry. Meredith isn't that girl. Meredith is the girl you date when you smoke a little too much weed, drink a little too much, and you think you love her. You really think you love her. You really think she loves you. And then on a Thursday, she tells you that she's going to New York with a guy named Paul and she's going for the weekend and she'll be back Monday. And you go "Whoa! We have been dating for two and a half years." And she goes, "I don't really understand what you're freaking out about. I'm just going to New York with some friend of mine." And you go "Oh, I forgot. You're Meredith. You're Meredith. And I thought something changed in the last two years, but it didn't." She will always be the girl, when you come home, who went dancing with a guy friend, who made out with a girl friend, or did this or did that or did this. All of these things that stop you from having a real relationship with her, that's her. And that's you. Truth, truth, you are a good time and a broken heart, wrapped up into a little bundle, packaged and put underneath the tree, [Meredith giggles] that men will have to go through in order to get on the other side and find happiness with another woman. That's you. That's you. You realize that right? [Meredith: Yeah.] And you're the part of the life that men look back on and go "When I was with Meredith, it was a great time." [Slimfast: Yeah, she's a good time.] "She ended up breaking my heart. Unbelievable that I, I didn't see it beforehand, but she crushed my heart. But I'm happy now. I'm married. I have kids." And Meredith will still be out just breaking guys. [Meredith giggles some more.] You just break 'em. That's what you do. You get that right? [Meredith: I guess. Slimfast: And it is cheating.] [Both Lazlo & Slimfast: It's cheating.] And the fact that you don't even recognize it and you give up the look like, "Ugh, it's not cheating" just validates everything I just said. [Meredith: I..ok.] You see what I'm saying? [Meredith: Yes. I do.] Right, because I'm the guy who's in love with you. We've been hanging out for a year and a half. Yeah, it started out you were the crazy girl who made out with other chicks but all the sudden we're living together and everything's cool. Wow, I had no idea I could pull this into a relationship and then one day you come home and go "I made out with these chicks over the weekend." And I go, hmph, "Of course you did. Of course you did." [Slimfast: You gonna stop making out with chicks, Meredith? Meredith: Yes.] The answer is no, Bambam. [Slimfast: I know. The relationships over. The relationship was over before it began. I agree.] He's just gotta figure out how far he wants to go. [Slimfast: Right, she's a good time. And, and, and, if he can make that good time last a little longer, she's not going to say --] Now he's at the point where-- And I've been in this relationship before, he's at the point where it's no longer a good time. [Slimfast: Probably] He's at the point now where, yeah, we have some good times, but it hurts. It stings. And now those stinging moments become more and more and more and more and more and more. And it's no longer just fun, it becomes painful. And he's at that point where he's starting to feel pain. And, therefore, he's gotta go. [Meredith growns.] Now, he'll probably let, let, if he's like every other guy, he'll probably ride this out until he can't take the pain anymore and he'll make you feel the pain too and it'll just end in a blood bath of horrible emotions on a Wednesday night, some night, and you sitting in that apartment by yourself and him packing up his stuff and moving back to Oklahoma. [Meredith: Oh god.] That's the way it ends. That's the way it always ends. Question is, is that six weeks from now or six months from now. It ain't six years from now. [Meredith laughs, kinda sadly though, not the giggle of before.] Fair enough, Bambam? [Slimfast: Fair enough.] Have fun Meredith. [Meredith laughs: Alright. Slimfast: Have a good time.] {End}

Though it probably goes without saying, I'll first interject that, unlike the guys, I think that Meredith could have great LTRRs, with men or with women, if she and her partners honestly embraced some sort of not exactly monogamous arrangement, though, since she asserts earlier in the segment that she would not be pleased with her boyfriend doing the same thing she did, it might be a bit harder to find a partner who is happy letting her play while he (or she) is not allowed to, though those people do exist.

I am intrigued by the apparent swap of gender stereotypes happening in this conversation, as the men seem to be attributing a level of desire for monogamous commitment to men that is usually reserved for women. While 'girls like Meredith' may be a good time, it seems that they are asserting that real happiness for these men that she dates, for any man, will be achieved once they have gotten over her, moved on, and settled down with a more stable (and monogamous) woman and had a child. (There's a whole different language and feminist discussion in the fact that they refer to Meredith as a girl but these men's future spouses as women, but I won't get into that.)

But something more personal stuck with me. I'm slightly dismayed by the thought that I may be a 'Meredith,' either in the eyes of the people I date or just by virtue of how the relationships shake out. Regular readers will probably know that the only LTRR I've been in which I didn't cheat was my open relationship with TyRoy. I somehow even managed to cheat in my open marriage. For me, many times, the risk is the reward, in all kinds of crazy situations. Despite a new found desire for a LTRR, rather than a just fuck-buddies situation (explained further in the next post), I am not sure how much my meds and DBT therapy will reduce my penchant for volatile LTRRs. I recently read, "One woman can break a man," in a compilation of six-word memoirs on love and heartbreak (fourth down.) Hell, I'm ruining relationships I'm not even in. Though Moneypenny and I are merely (barely?) friends at the moment and hundreds of miles away from each other, I appear to be ruining his romantic relationship. (Yes, and the fact that it is not me he is in that relationship with only advocates further for the idea that I am a 'Meredith.' I'm aware of that as well.)

But I don't know how to be anything other than I am. And I think I've changed drastically in the years Moneypenny and I's friendship was burned. But we still seem to be playing out the same roles we always have, which begs the question in my mind of how much people are able to change. Even in the radio segment, the men do not say that Meredith should change, merely asserting who she is. In recent emails, TyRoy asserts that there are men (and women) who would be more than happy with me as I am right now. His contention is that, while I have never been a perfect person in any relationship, it take two to tango and that many of the non-cheating issues I blame on myself have more to do with these men's Peter Pan-ing issues than with some wrong I have done them. My DBT therapy teaches skills, especially mindfulness practices, that are meant to help us behave in more effective ways, though not necessarily the same ways for each practitioner or for each situation. But does changing behavior change who we are? People in AA never stop calling themselves alcoholics, but instead call themselves recovering alcoholics, even if they haven't had a drink in years or decades. Many would assert though that current behavior, as the only thing demonstrable about ourselves, must count for a large part of who we are. I guess it begs the question of if who we are is what other people see about us or how we feel inside. Buddhist tradition says that there is no who we are: can you separate the waves from the ocean? is the flame on the candle the same flame that was on the candle a minute ago or is it a different flame? It's a dialectical dilemma I've struggled with for years and never really found an answer to, often just allowing all things to be true and work as best I can within all those frameworks.

But that isn't to say that thinking I'm a woman who breaks people isn't disturbing me right now.

NB: I'm using the Merriam Webster's second definition of DIALECTIC, concerned with or acting through opposing forces, which is the one I believe my DBT therapy is using in it's name, though my DBT instructors have always also asserted that it refers to two seemingly opposite things being true at the same time, which, when accepted, reduces the extreme and/or black and white thinking that often gets us into trouble.

Psy Treatment Ambivalence

2012-01-10T17:26:00.007-06:00

Before I start exploring the side of this situation that I actually find interesting, I want to make something very clear. I am (currently) very happy that the intervention of my loved ones and medical professionals, medications, therapy, and even hospitalizations have saved my life more times that I really like to admit. I am happy to be working on making my life better in ways that I think are necessary and to be on medications that I believe allow me the breathing space to do that. This post is not the predecessor to me stopping either my therapy or my medication, as I have absolutely no plans of doing either. But, as my mother told me recently, I've never been able to not ask "why" of anything and I've been thinking more and more about the other side of this issue, to possibilities other than the current accepted treatment of mental illness in the U.S.

TV junkie that I am, some of this thinking was prodded by a quote I heard on a tv show, the finale to FX's American Horror Story. Though it was only meant to be a cutting comment to one of his former patients, psychologist Ben Harmon declares,“Therapy. Doesn’t. Work.” When the patient then asks why people do it is “Because they don’t want to take any responsibility for their crappy lives. So they pay a therapist to listen to their bullshit and make it all feel… ‘special’ … so they can blame their crazy mothers for everything that went wrong.” I would add 'absent fathers' to that. Of course I heard this only days after I was released from my latest (not exactly voluntary) hospitalization, typically a time of both hope for future treatment as well as bitterness about the circumstance surrounding the hospitalization itself. I have to admit that one of my problems with past therapists I've seen was that I didn't feel like I was progressing anywhere, but just dealing with the problems of the week, a season of Buffy without any overarching, linked storylines. I wasn't getting better. I just had a disinterested third-party to bitch to now. One of the biggest draws to the DBT therapy that I'm currently in is that my individual therapist and I clearly stated goals for what I want to accomplish through therapy while the group sessions are teaching and reinforcing the skills that I'm using to accomplish them. But it's hard to deny some level of truth to what Dr. Ben says.

The next dominoes to fall came after I started receiving bills from my hospitalization. While I find it difficult to say to anyone, especially people who have lost someone to suicide, that anyone, especially their loved one, should be (have been) allowed to die if that is what they want(ed), even if they had the option of medical assistance, when I am said person and that medical assistance costs tens of thousands of dollars...well, let's just say that I was not quite as enthusiastic about those prospects.

In one of the recent GOP presidential nominee debates, this exchange occurred:

Wolf Blitzer, debate moderator: A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?

Ron Paul, Republican nominee, but often described as libertarian: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.

Wolf Blitzer: Well, what do you want?

Ron Paul: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced

Wolf Blitzer: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

Ron Paul: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks (applause from many in the audience)

Wolf Blitzer: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

Audience: Yes!!!

Ron Paul: No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. This whole idea, that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because they dump it on the government, it becomes a bureaucracy.

Now, liberal commie me and the me who knows how high my uncle's medical bills were even with insurance and Medicaid doesn't really agree with that and, if you judge by the laws of our country, our country largely doesn't believe that the choice of whether people receive life-saving treatment should be left to charities and chance either. Emergency rooms are lawfully required to give whatever treatment will continue the life of a patient, regardless of if they have the ability to pay or not. I understand why this is the law of the land and agree that life-saving medical treatment should not be withheld because a person cannot pay, especially if they desire the treatment, but that does not mean that they will not be required or at least asked to pay.

Now, currently, if a person is not competent to make medical decisions for whatever reason and they do not have a specific DNR, living will instructions with them, and no medical proxy to make the decision to refuse treatment for them, doctors will give them the proper treatment to save their life. For the most part, even if they are conscious, people who have tried to commit suicide are automatically assumed to be not competent to make the decision to refuse life-saving treatment. If the person is not able to refuse medical treatment for whatever reason, they will be billed for whatever services are rendered, even though they did not consent to the services and might not have, if able to. For people who are being saved from an attempted suicide, a several day psychiatric hospitalization will be tacked on to their treatment, after their physical health is established and stable. Though the patient is nominally given the choice, this isn't really true. For those people lucky enough not to have experienced this, a person is usually given the chance to decide whether they will be transferred to a psychiatric unit "voluntarily" or the attending psychiatrist can commit them involuntarily with a 72 hour hold, to a dreaded "state hospital" if they do not have insurance. A patient can fight the hold and can fight further commitment afterwards, but, whether true or not, as I've never actually challenged it, patients are told that judges don't usually find in favor of the patient and resisting the hospitalization is generally seen as continued mental instability so no doctor will let you out. Even signing in "voluntarily" doesn't necessarily mean one can just sign out again. Doctors and nurses will tell a patient that their insurance will not pay for their visit if they sign out AMA (against medical advice), which is what they are requesting to do. If this doesn't work, patients will then be told the same thing that people who do not want to be voluntarily committed will be told, that their doctors can decide to put their hospitalization on a 72 hour hold, at which time they can challenge it, but they won't win and it will just be wasted time, since their resistance is seen as further instability. I'm not sure if these are scare tactics or not. I just know that this is what patients are told, from both my experience and the experience of my fellow patients.

My point with all of this is that, while I am not arguing that anyone should just be denied life-saving medical treatment just because they don't have health insurance or the ability to pay for the treatment, I am starting to wonder about our inability to refuse medical treatment on the basis that we cannot pay. I guess maybe I'm just surrounded by (too many) conservatives, but all I seem to hear lately is that people should not do things they cannot pay for and that no one should rely on the government to pick up the slack when they do things they cannot pay for. But in for a dime, in for a dollar, right? Just some examples: Should people not be allowed to drive if they can afford car insurance, but just the bare minimum, which covers anyone they might hit or any damage they might do while driving, but not whatever damage they might do to themselves and end up in the hospital needing life-saving treatment for? Also, if a person cannot work, cannot find work, or just doesn't want to to work, can they kill themselves so they do not require anything anymore? Oh wait...currently they can't. I'd been pondering all this since starting to deal with the bills, but came up a bit short on finding an audience for these views. Then again, I guess my mother was not the best person to start with and the best time was not just as we were about to get to my uncle's grave.

Then, a few days ago, catching up on my RSS feed, I saw this blog article From Risk to Harm and from Harm to Suicide. For some reason, now that I'm writing this I can't find the area of the article where the author discusses how true liberatarianism should advocate against forced hospitalizations and such. Crap. Either way, this article, the second in a series, after Mad Not Crazy, raises questions about the ways race and psychiatry intersect, helped me realize that not only was I not the ONLY person who questioned the mainstream ways of treating mental illness in North America (the author is a Canadian, living in Toronto), but that there is a WHOLE MOVEMENT (however small), called the "mad movement" (not to be confused with the Make A Difference, or M.A.D. movement), which, from these articles, seems to refute the idea that someone who thinks differently is ill in a manner that needs medical or psychiatric treatment, but asserts that there are many different ways in which people think and experience the world which should be embraced. When reading the above articles, my thinking about mental illness and the appropriate ways were challenged in ways that my thinking about anything probably hasn't been challenged since Miss Kee was alive. Though the articles are in depth and full of ideas on race that I'm not sure many of my readers will agree with, I still recommend them as they offer different ways to think about mental illness, about what I'm going through, about what some of you are living with, though I obviously am not telling ya'll to just throw your pills in the toilet and the rest of your life will be all daisies and roses.

I did want to share these ideas with a larger audience though, to show my dear readers that there are other ways to think of these things that are worth thinking about, and that even a person devoted to their current treatment can still be ambivalent about it and the way mental health is currently dealt with in this country, the country most of you are from and reside in. Please read those other articles when you have some free time. Comment. Thanks for reading.

About the title of the post: Quote from "Mad Not Crazy"

"Members of the Mad community may also identify politically as psychiatric survivors. Psychiatric survivors are people who have experienced the mental health system and feel psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, and similar helping professions (called the “psy” complex) can be ineffective, harmful, and even violent. The “psy” complex does not just exist in the hospital or the therapy room, but is pervasive in other spaces such as schools, settlement services, and prisons. It’s present any time behavioral language and psychological practices are put into effect in a workplace. Psychiatric survivor scholars and activists explore how psychiatry is a tool for detention and social control. We lobby to end forced drugging, electroshock, restraint, seclusion, institutionalization, and outpatient torture."

Yes, I am aware that this is a rather non-mainstream view of things, but that is what makes it all the more interesting to me to contemplate.

Picking at Scabs

2011-12-28T01:17:00.005-06:00

It would be so nice to feel sleepy around 10 pm, before even taking any medication, then just lay down in bed and fall asleep. I'm told that's what normal people do and what I will eventually do when I'm healthy. I think it's all bullshit. Tonight I started feeling sleepy, drop dead tired at around 10:30, after eating, but I made the mistake of playing around on my phone, then journalling my day, which led to me thinking about what day it was by that time, since it was by then after midnight, and, well, I fell apart.

I sent this email to Moneypenny, typed on my phone, so sorry about the really poor grammar.

There's an episode of House in which House & his friend Wilon are on the outs but Wilson & their boss conspire to, basically, drug & kidnap Houe to make him attend his father's funeral, at the request of his mother, who knows House has much anomysity towards his father that he won't go on his own. During the ride to the funeral, House tells Wilson that part of his feelings are that the man wasn't really his biological father, which he figured out at 13 because of recessive genetic traits and that the man was a marine, shipped out at the crucial time, but House felt that it was himself who was decieved. At the funeral, House even goes so far as to get a tissue sample by pretending to kiss the deceased, so he can prove it later. Wilson ends up fighting with him and getting so angry that he throws a bottle of booze, at what he assumes is the wall but is really a stained glass window, which he breaks.
In the last scene, Wilson brings House the results of the dna test,which he'd intercepted before they got to House. Wilson also came to tell House that he'd been right about something he'd said earlier, that for all the insanity House had gotten him into that day, it was the mostfun he'd had in a long time, since what paused their friendship. Of course, the test results confirm House's lifelong hypothesis about hi parentage. Wilson tells him that this must make him feel a bit better, because it proved he was that smart and right at 13. House doesn't look more pleased. "Wilson, [beat] my dad is dead." Wilson looks genuinely sad for him. "My condolencses. Let me buy you dinner." He opens the door and waits for his friend.
Being the Wilson to my House doesn't mean you get the shitty character.
My grandpa died today. Around 6 am. I'm so sad.

I started crying and decided I'd rather watch the episode of House, if I owned it, than lay in bed and cry. Somehow I don't have season 4, but I do have season 5, and this episode is the fourth episode of season 5. I'm not sure if I'm lucky or not.

Around 6 am, December 28th, 2007, so about four years less five hours from right about now, I watched my grandfather die.

As I stood in the kitchen, crying, trying to find something to drink that didn't have caffeine to go with my pistachio pudding, things started flooding back to me. You know, it's strange how things run together. All the deaths. All the regrets. All the things you didn't do. All the things you did do. Four years is the blink of an eye when you're watching your child grow up, when you're pushing your way through high school, when it's the last four years you get with someone. Four years is forever when you're watching people die. Four minutes is forever when you're lost and alone and can't figure out where you're going.

I drive Moneypenny crazy with late night phone calls and text messages. The text messages he, rightly, ignores. When it used to be phone calls, he'd feint interest and try to get me off the phone as soon as he could so he could go back to sleep. I don't fault him for this feeling. But, even before this recent extended dance with the Reaper, I've had this fear that I wouldn't say what needed to be said before someone was gone from my life. Maybe it was because I didn't know that the last time I saw my biological father would be the last time I saw my biological father. The anxiety most people felt when they wanted to tell someone that they had a crush on them was doubled by my own worry that this might be my last chance that I ever got to tell them that I had a crush on them, because they might move the next day or get hit by a bus. There was so much I told my uncle, about my life, about my feelings, about my crushes, about my friendships, on our long drives. But there were also times I'd sit outside his door while he was asleep, when I couldn't sleep, when I fought the urge to wake him up and tell him how bad it hurt, inside, all the time. When he was still living with my grandparents and my parents and I would visit from the Very Large Midwestern City, he'd give up his bedroom to my parents. He and I would have to share a bedroom, which was wonderfully awkward for a 9 year old girl and a 20 year old young man, though I slept on a day bed and he slept on a pull-out bed which only sometimes stayed propped up through the whole night. (That was funny, in a Three Stooges kinda way.) I'd lay in my bed, listening to him sleep, wishing I had the balls to wake him up and tell him that I was sad and desperate and maybe even suicidal, though I had no way to express that except reading all the horror novels I could get my hands on. I wish I had told him and yet I'm glad I didn't. It's hard enough dealing with my mental illness as an adult, when the doctors and pharmacists have a sort of kind of solid hold on what the illnesses look like and how the medications probably effect a person, much less children when it's all fucked up and topsy turvy. If my family is worried about me now, I can't even imagine the eggshells they would have felt they needed to walk on then. But I don't think I've ever told this to anyone. Not even Moneypenny. I wonder if my uncle knew. Even more than my mother, he seemed to know everything. While he didn't get to punish me for things I had no idea how he knew, he did get the burden of whether or not to share it with my mother, so she could decide what to do with it. On the other hand, it seems unimaginably cruel to let me sit outside his door for hours and cry and not do anything about it. If there's one thing he wasn't to me, it was cruel.

And why am I talking about my uncle when it's the anniversary of my grandfather's death? Because they all run together. Because I wasn't as close to my grandfather. Because it was easier to accept my grandfather's death. Because it's been longer. Because I could justify it by saying that my grandfather had done all, or almost all, of what he was going to do with his life. And why am I telling you? Putting all these personal issues on blast? Maybe just so I don't feel the need to wake up my poor good friend who is probably sleeping peacefully next to his lovely girlfriend and who definitely has to be at work at 8 in the morning tomorrow (or today.) Sigh.

But I still miss my grandfather. MGD and fritos. Steel guitars and lottery tickets. Ashes and strong coffee. Those steaks my grandmother made for him that I never could figure out how he could chew through without his dentures. A man who never said "I love you," but who never did anything to make me doubt that he did. I care him with me wherever I go and try to let his example lead me, try to be as good of a man and a person as he was. I miss you Grandpa.

[Oh, but I got the details of the episode wrong. Wilson goes to see House because House's patient pulls through. House is drinking in celebration of the test results which proved him right, but he's still depressed because he feels nothing at all at the news. But their final exchange is still the same. Your real friends are the ones who understand, or maybe just accept, that you can be righteous while being pissed off that you're right while still being sad that this person that you had such a strange and complex relationship with is dead. And while they might not show the textbook perfect response, their response is still... well, it's still something. Sometimes, something is all you really need. Your friends will never have the perfect response for you and you'll never have the perfect response for them. But being there is a big step in the right direction.]

[And I'm still the same person. I'm just blogging under an account that's tied to my Google. When I started the blog, google didn't own blogger and/or I didn't have a google account, so I used the email I'd been using for years. Now I rely on google for tons of stuff and I'm too lazy to log out of all my google stuff just so I can blog. So there's two of me blogging on here: Ava and AvaAlso. I think my gentle readers are intelligent enough for this not to cause a large problem.]

Moneypenny, the Repseudonyming of Sir

2011-12-06T02:13:00.004-06:00

Even though almost all people who read this blog are my personal friends who probably have some idea as to who the pseudonyms correspond to, I still like using the pseudonyms in my blog. This post, from 3 years ago, is the last post in which I updated the pseudonyms I use and my current relationship to those people: http://whatsbehindtheeyes.blogspot.com/2008/04/psuedonym-post-vol-3.html. In it, I wrote this:

Sir- Sir is my most recent ex-boyfriend. We were together 5 years. His
pseudonym of Sir is one that he came up with because, whenever he is out with
male friends at restaurants, the waitresses always call his friends "sweetie"
and "honey" but they always call him "Sir." We broke up February 2005 and have
remained good friends since. **Update: I sabotaged that friendship by revealing
what I felt was his hypocrisy on my blog. But I also revealed a secret that I
shouldn't have, largely out of spite and anger that I felt towards any and all
men who cheat.

Now, when I started this blog, when the above person and I were both in our mid-20s, it was pretty humorous that everyone treated him like a much older man. It was also particularly humorous to me because I felt like he was a stick in the mud who never did anything fun (read: crazy, risky) and I've never tired of pointing that out. In fact, I still don't tire of pointing it out, but I guess it now seems cruel to poke fun at his old-ness, now that he's starting to get laugh lines around his eyes, though few people see them because they only show up when he smiles and he doesn't really smile all that much.

As last year turned into the current one, I wrote a post on my lingering regrets about the ending of our relationship, which managed to reel him back into my life. Though it's been a rocky road back, I think we're finally managing to get on steady ground in our friendship. Which means, of course, that, if I'm writing, he's going to show up in it, even though he probably hates that. And "Sir" just didn't seem to fit anymore, so I started thinking about repseudonyming him.

At the time I was contemplating the repseudonyming, I was watching a BBC show called The Hour, about a fictionalized newsmagazine starting up in 1956. The reckless and headstrong reporter Freddy Lyon often jokingly refers to his bestfriend, and now boss, Bel Rowley as Moneypenny, after the levelheaded secretary to James Bond's boss M. Bel usually then points out that it is she who is the boss now, but, throughout the show, the stubborn reporter often makes the tail wag the dog. Now, though the gender is switched, I thought this a great comparison for Sir and I. In a me-centered world, he's the girl-friday in my crazy, wacky adventures, the strictly logical reasonable has-it-all-together homebody to my emotional living-on-the-edge wanderer. He's the Moneypenny to my James, at least relatively speaking.

So there's your newest pseudonym. Sir has been rechristened Moneypenny.

Bitter, Sad, or Funny Christmas Songs

2011-12-06T00:17:00.004-06:00

Well, gentle readers, it's that time of year again. Though it probably isn't true, I remember hearing on tv shows and movies the whole time I was growing up that suicide rates are noticeably higher than the rest of the year. If you're alone, you feel lonely. Even if you have friends or family, but are the kind of person who often feels lonely around people, you're probably going to feel even lonelier around even more people. And though it's supposed to be the celebration of a birth, since it coincides with the beginning of winter and the end of the calendar year, it seems to make people dwell on those that have died, instead of those born or living.

I'm no different, on all those fronts. They say that the first holidays without a loved one are the hardest, especially when that loved one played a large role in that holiday. One of the reasons that the first Christmas without Grandpa was particularly hard was because he loved the holiday so much. Recent Facebook posts from my uncle's friends have highlighted the ways in which their holiday season is much different without him. I'd tried to just push it away, but today it came crashing down. For the past few years, I've done the shopping for the gifts that my family donates to a local charity. I really do like doing it. But I didn't make it past getting my shower. I started crying while in there and couldn't stop. My uncle is what made Christmas special for me at a time when I really needed to reconnect with my family. Even before that, he was what made it all come alive for me.

While I remember bits and pieces of my early Christmases, it's sometimes difficult to tell what is memory and what is from pictures. The first holidays I really remember started after I moved with my mom and my step-dad to Really Big Midwestern City from Medium Sized But Larger than where I currently live Midwestern City, where my grandparents and my uncle resided, where I was born and raised until then. Moving was a huge culture shock for me and I was severely homesick, as I always considered my grandparents' house HOME. With that move started the tradition of me spending my school breaks with my grandparents at their home. Though we celebrated Christmas in Really Big Midwestern City, my maternal grandparents and my uncle always came up and spent it with us and the rest of the family on my step-father's side. Then, I'd go back home with them. My parents would fetch me after the New Year. As I wasn't much of a kid as a kid, when with the extended family, I felt more comfortable with the adults than I did with my cousins, who were 2 and 4 years younger than me. My uncle, who was smack dab in between my mom's generation of people and my generation of people, was my closest ally. He was also amazing at defusing our family spats, which inevitably rose as we all spent more time together. He was amazing at picking gifts. Always knew just the right thing to get a person. He really liked putting gifts in those shirt boxes. My family has a ton of them that we've reused throughout the years, some with old Famous Barr and Dillard logos. But he wanted to make sure they stayed closed and together, so he'd put strips of tape on all four sides and it was a bitch to get them open. My grandpa would bring his pocket knife out to open his presents.

In an effort to exorcise, or at least air out, my current demons, I wanted to write about all the stuff that I remembered about spending time with my uncle around Christmas. It's fragmented and not really in any order, but I'm hoping it helps me.

Crystal Pepsi. My family has a soda obsession and my uncle was the main driver of this obsession. For as long as I can remember, he loved Diet Coke. His favorite excuse to get out of my grandparents' house, go for a drive, was that he was going to fill up his soda cup. While he always stuck with Diet Coke, I liked trying most new and different beverages. One year, because of the way the Christmas and New Year's holidays fell, my school break started almost a week before Christmas Eve, so I got to go out to my grandparents' house for several days before. I rode back to Really Big Midwest City with my uncle. It was more fun to make the 6 hour trip with him than with my grandparents, who flooded the car with cigarette smoke, stopped every half hour to use the restroom and get a cup of coffee, drove the 55 mph speed limit on the highway, and only listened to 60s and 70s country classics, most of which I didn't know the words to so I couldn't sing along. My uncle always had really cool cars, listened to really cool music, didn't care that I sung at the top of my lungs off-key, would talk with me, and only needed to stop once to go pee on the trip. I believe that trip was also the same year that Crystal Pepsi came out. Like any good American consumer, I had seen all the commercials and I was frothing at the mouth to taste this new sensation. It wasn't yet in the stores in my grandparents' hometown and it wasn't in the gas station we'd stopped at on the way back to Really Big Midwest City. The car was pretty low on gas by the time we reached the house of my step-dad's parents, where the rest of the family had already gathered, but my uncle didn't stop on the way to the house. I wonder if that wasn't intentional, so he'd have an excuse for him or us to go for a drive when he got tired of being there. Either way, several hours later, we were driving around the snowy, small suburb, looking for any gas station that was open on Christmas Eve and trying to find any radio station that wasn't playing Christmas songs. Both were quite a challenge, but the gas station that was open had Crystal Pepsi. I was so happy and, of course, my uncle bought me a bottle. At the time, I loved it. I wish it was still on the market, though I'm obviously a minority. But, yeah, I remember Crystal Pepsi.

And the SNL Christmas special that used to air over and over again on Comedy Central. Which that year included a Crystal Gravy parody commercial. That year, my parents and I were living in a house with a third bedroom and we set up a camping cot in that room for my uncle to sleep on. My grandparents got my bedroom and I got the couch. The year before, without the cot, my uncle had to sleep in my step-dad's armchair, which kept un-reclining throughout the night. My parents have never believed in having televisions in the bedroom so our household's second tv was in the third bedroom. My uncle and I used the cot like a couch to watch the SNL Christmas special and any other Christmas specials that weren't all happy-happy-joy-joy. I was kinda a cynical pessimistic depressed kid. But that was our time together and it saved me from getting into even more arguments with my step-dad, who is unbelievably grumpy around Christmas time for no discernible reason.

As I became a teenager, I fought more with my step-dad, and everyone else, all year round, though Christmas was especially bad. Despite the fact that my step-dad doesn't like the holiday and isn't a particularly social person, it seems like most of our fights during the holidays revolved around me not being social enough with our whole family. Oddly enough, the fighting didn't motivate me to be more social, but made me withdraw more. Finally, one year in my late teens, I pessimistically asserted to my uncle that I thought the holidays were all bullshit and just something to suffer through as best you could. My uncle tried to refute this, but I was so stubborn. Finally, he walked out. Not just of the room, but the house. Got in his vehicle and drove off. This was shocking to me. Though he and I had picked on each other and fought when I was really young, and I'd seen him argue with my grandmother/his mother, he was one of the most level-headed, best able to debate another person and/or defuse tense situations, people I'd ever known. I don't think I'd ever seen him walk out of a room angry from an argument in progress, much less a whole house. He came back about a half hour later and calmly told me that he valued the holidays so much because they gave him a chance to spend extended amounts of time with people he loved but might not get to see this much all year long. He was very sad for me that I couldn't see it like that and worried that he hadn't done a good enough job of showing me what the holidays should really be about. That conversation really stuck with me. I can't say I've always been successful at avoiding the melancholy of the season, but I try to be thankful for the loved ones I have and enjoy their company. For as long as I can possibly stand it at least.

My uncle was my partner in crime and comedy from the time I was young. We were always getting in trouble with our respective parents for laughing, giggling, and making jokes at inopportune times, like dinner prayers and graduation ceremonies. Though I'm now aware that comedic holiday songs are nothing new, the year that "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" came out, my uncle and I had it memorized. I think it was by far our favorite Christmas song of all time. My mom couldn't find it in cassette format, but did manage to find the album. That might have been how I learned to move the needle to certain songs, because we only cared about that one song and listened to it endlessly. Though my mom has a massive collection of Christmas music on vinyl, cassette, and CD, that song, along with the Muppets and John Denver's Christmas Together, will always be my childhood Christmas soundtrack. Our shared love of that song has fueled my love of slightly less than classic Christmas songs, or classic Christmas songs in a less than classic or classy style. Some of my favorites are Merry Christmas from the Family, which has been done by Toby Keith as well as Jill Sobule; I'll Be Hating You for Christmas by Everclear; Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kristy MacCollum; and the Ben Fold's song about Santa getting stuck in the chimney and Mrs. Clause suing his ass, which my grandfather also thought was hilarious. Please feel free to share your favorite bitter, sad, or funny Christmas songs in the comments. One of my recent faves is at the end of this post.

That isn't all my memories of holidays with my uncle, but that's what sticks in my head right now. In contrast to my pessimistic, cynical childhood and teenage days, in my advancing age, I find that, more and more, I want warm loving holidays. I think my younger self would be much better at this Christmas, as it would give me a good excuse to be a Scrooge. But this year is made harder by the fact that I don't want to be that, but it's really hard to be happy when half of your family has died in the last four years and you're one of the few un-coupled people you know. I want to be happy this holiday so badly, for my grandpa who loved the holiday, for my grandma who made it all come together, for my uncle who taught me how to love it too, and for my mom who's lost just as much, if not more, than I have. I just don't know how to do that.

Huh. You know, for the past week or so, since right after Thanksgiving, this song has been in my head and I had associated it with someone else, a former love if you will. But now I think maybe it is for my mom and I. Enjoy.

Heartache Can Wait - Brandi Carlile

You're talking about leaving
It's right about Christmas time
Thinking about moving on
I think I might die inside
I'm thinking about years gone by
I'm thinking about church at midnight
I'm thinking about letting go
I think that might finally be alright
But this is where we shine

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because
The heartache can wait

It's not about hanging on
It's making my deal with God
If I could call one last truce
We've given it all we've got
Then I'm gonna catch my breath
And make it a long December
If we've got nothing left
This could be worth remembering
With a smile upon my face

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because
The heartache can wait

Sexual Semantics

2011-11-22T21:35:00.003-06:00

For those of you just joining this program already in progress, your humble narrator, while often anti-social, very much enjoys intimacy with those she cares about. She has also enjoyed intimacy with those she didn't know quite so well, by and large without regret. But as a bisexual woman who's also had relationships with men who did not prefer penis in vagina (PIV) sex, I've often been in a situation to ponder what I think is or isn't sex. If it's PIV sex, then lesbian couples, gay male couples, couples who only engage in BDSM or fetish play, and male-female couples who can't or don't have PIV sex, no matter how intimate they are or how long they've been together, have not had sex. If you draw the line at penetration, so we'll say adding anal sex and sex involving dildos or objects, well then you still have some couples of all stripes who decide not to have penetrative sex. Also, there are some hetrosexual people who have anal intercourse, but still consider themselves virgins because they have not had PIV sex, so penetration seems to be a bad place to try to draw any lines. I think that there are many people who would say that things you call sex are sex so oral sex, PIV sex, anal sex are "what counts." But even if you dismiss post-Clinton ideas of oral sex not really being sex, I can't count the number of conversations I've had where I said that I haven't really had sex with a man because we haven't had PIV sex and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who has relationships with men who's said the same thing. Back to my first hand though, I know I wouldn't say I've never had sex with a woman, though I've never had pentrative or, obviously, PIV sex with a woman.

So why the hell does it matter anyway? Well, I think it matters because we make it matter. In discussions of fidelity, it's asked if the suspect partner has had sex with another person. So what counts? Just like with sex, people draw the line in different places and even different members of the same couple might not exactly agree on what matters.

I've also found that it matters because it's how many people often judge the pinnacle of their intimacy. Because for a hetro couple, PIV sex is supposed to be the ultimate goal post for how far along your relationship is, since it facilitates your ultimate goal of a couple - procreation. Oh, what? That's not why you're having PIV sex? Heathen! I think all couples have to deal with a certain amount of presumption about what they have or have not deal on that rather simple sexual spectrum, especially if they've been together for any significant period of time, but that spectrum is based on hetronormative, penetration-focused, procreation-directed ideas. But I've realized recently that this puts undue pressure on...well, everyone, to push towards sexual acts they might not be ready for or push partners for the same. And, much to my shame, I've been guilty of this for a very long time. I got away with it because I am a woman and this particular partner is male. If the genders were reversed or if the genders were the same and I heard of one partner pressuring the other to do sexual acts that they had drawn a strict line through, even if I thought the refusing partner's reasons were less than reasonable, I would argue that the pressurer was being an ass.

Thus, while I know I'm probably in the (small) minority, I've decided to work on not putting goalposts or specific definitions of what counts. And if you have to ask if something is cheating, than it probably is. Or, in a openly open relationship, something that needs to be disclosed. More than that, I'm finding myself very happy with the current levels of physical intimacy, whether or not I'm going "all the way."

In a nice bit of coincidence, right after I'd thought out this post, I read this Savage Love Letter of the Day, "I'm putting "sex" in quotes here because your boyfriend defines sex as "vaginal intercourse." I don't. In fact, I think oral, handjobs, and visuals-with-a-partner also count as sex," in his response to a woman who's boyfriend thought four PIV sex encounters a week, plus oral, handjobs, and getting naked so he could get himself off, was deprivation. See, if my ideas mesh with Dan Savages, especially in the area of sex and relationships, I think I'm probably on the right track.

So what counts as sex to you?

Sometimes I Feel Cold As Steel, Broken Like I'm Never Gonna Heal

2011-09-26T21:39:00.002-05:00

Ok dear readers, no bitching about this being a country song. It's very pop and very...build-up orchestral inspiring. Right now I'm only half way there. I'm at the broken part, still working on seeing the world again. That's part of why I haven't written much at all. I just don't have it in me. But maybe you'll be able to understand this. Thanks for everyone who's stuck by me. I'll try to have more to read soon. Love-Ava

Hello World

Traffic crawls, cell phone calls
Talk radio screams at me
Through my tinted window I see
A little girl, rust red minivan
She's got chocolate on her face
Got little hands, and she waves at me
Yeah, she smiles at me

Hello world
How've you been?
Good to see you, my old friend
Sometimes I feel cold as steel
Broken like I'm never gonna heal
I see a light, a little hope
In a little girl
Hello world

Every day I drive by
A little white church
It's got these little white crosses
Like angels in the yard
Maybe I should stop on in
Say a prayer
Maybe talk to God
Like he is there
Oh I know he is there
Yeah, I know he's there

Hello world
How've you been?
Good to see you, my old friend
Sometimes I feel as cold as steel
And broken like I'm never going to heal
I see a light
A little grace, a little faith unfurled
Hello world

Sometimes I forget what living's for
And I hear my life through my front door
And I'll be there
Oh I'm home again
I see my wife, my little boy, little girl
Hello world
Hello world

All the empty disappears
I remember why I'm here
Just surrender and believe
I fall down on my knees
Oh hello world
Hello world
Hello world

Slow

2011-07-22T15:51:00.002-05:00

Just don't look myself in the eyes. I just have to put this one cream on my face and then I don't have to look in the mirror until I do my hair. I just have to keep it together to put on this one cream. Because if I see myself start to cry, if I even just see my face right now, I'm done for. It's all over. I'll be a blubbering mess. Thank the gods today is not a day where I have any reason to wear makeup.

A friend suggested I watch this amazing short film, Slow, directed by Darius Clark Monroe. To whittle it down would be to do it an injustice, but, as with anything that has to do with black sexuality or gay sexuality or sexually tense situations, I couldn't help but think of you. I watched all of Mr. Monroe's short films that were available on vimeo and I had to fight back thinking about you because I knew I'd lose it if I let myself think about how I couldn't share this with you, that I couldn't share anything with you again.

I wonder what you'd think of the new cover of "99 Problems." Tribute or rip-off or somewhere in the middle?

One of the blogs I read, Racialicious, is doing an online book club of Octavia Butler books. I don't know if you ever read any of her books and I know you were never really a scifi fan, but I'd give anything to buy double copies of everything, one for me and one for you, so we could read along with these other men and women all over the world.

I want to watch Game of Thrones or True Blood with you and talk for hours about race, sexuality, class, ownership, and anything else that comes up.

I know you'd understand better than many how it feels to worry about living up to potential, pressure to make good on the hard work that others did for you to be where you are, even if it's only pressure from yourself, when you feel like you're running in quicksand. I wish I could talk to you. Wish I could hear you tell me that I don't have to live up to anything. That I don't have to live a certain way because they can't anymore, those people I've lost, because you can't. I should live up to what I can do at any given moment because I owe it to myself. Hell, you'd probably offer me a toke and tell me to just chill, worry about it tomorrow, not to stress about it right now. But I wish I could hear that from you. Girl, you have no idea how much I miss you. Today and everyday.

I was changed for good and for the better by knowing you. If I wasn't an incredible pain in the ass on equality issues before, I definitely am now, which I think is better. Being around you made me realize how incomplete my education was and you made me want to keep filling in the gaps. You have probably been the only female who's helped me feel more alright with being turned on by "the wrong" thing. You knew I was totally in love with you but, thankfully, you never made a big deal out of it.

I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll write to you here, but it's the first time I've written in a long while and that's something. Even if my face is all red and puffy, my nose is dripping and I'm completely unsuitable looking to leave the house. Thank you, Miss Kee. I miss you terribly.

Drug Experimentation

2011-04-17T03:02:00.003-05:00

Psychiatrists can never say with certainty that an particular drug or any particular combination will work, or that their side effects won't outweigh the good that they'd do you. This means that months of drug and dosage recombinations until you and your doctor finds what the two of you think is best. As your doctor has much more experience at this than you, it's usually more their call when you've reached that point. I've been on lithium since November 2008. I know I'm probably a broken record on the shitty side effects, but here it goes again. I have much less affect, my memory is fried, I can't concentrate like I used to, and my sex drive is nonexistant. Late last year, I got my doctor to agree to mess with my medicine a little bit to help increase my sex drive, but not by taking me off the lithium, but by putting me on a different anti-depressant. Yeah, that didn't work so well, because that drug made me physically ill all that time. No time to worry about if I'm horny if I'm puking my guts out, right? After that debacle, I had things other than sex to worry about and I knew that it'd be be awhile after those things got sorted out before I'd really be looking to get laid, so I just let it go. So, while this might be common sense, or at least something that is easily deduced, when a person who is supposed to take a specific combination of meds two times every day, "when they wake up" and "before they go to bed," but this person often sleeps odd and long hours and barely remembers to eat or get a shower, well, it's probably not a long shot that they won't remember to take their medicines like they are supposed to. (Yeah, I admitted this to my doc. I'm trying not to have to say it outright to my folks, as I'm attempting to take the meds, it just doesn't always work out that way.) The best, and pretty much only side effect I've noticed, has been the return of my sex drive!!! A bit of this sexual playfulness has popped up in emails, sometimes surprising even me. Then, last night, as I was flipping through premium cable channels late at night, like Skinamax Extreme and I felt a foreign tingle south of my waistline. Hmmm. What was that? So tonight I decided to take advantage of a bit of free time, renew my friendship with my rabbit. What can I say?!? I feel like a new woman. A new nymphomanic woman. A new nymphomanic woman who wants to start exercising regularly so she can be better, leaner, stronger, more flexible in and out of bed. Unfortunately, I think this will disappear once I'm on the "proper" dose of medication again. Ugh. What's a woman to do?

Uncharted

2011-04-13T03:21:00.003-05:00

Today was the second meeting the grief support group that my mom and I are going to. Last Sunday, the third, was the one month anniversary of my uncle's death. I know that just the time in between, if nothing else that I contributed, because, honestly, I haven't contributed much to pushing through this or moving on, has made it a little better. I don't have that deep, physical, painful hurt all of the time like I used to. I can sleep without the extreme use of alcohol or anti-anxioty drugs, though I'm still having sleeping issues, which I might talk about later. But just the time, in and of itself, has helped and I've realized that I no longer feel that horrible all the time. And that's a start. I'm also slowly but surely moving towards seeking other help. My mom and I are going to a greif support group and I'm going to explore my options of getting back with a therapist soon. While I still cry too much, too often, and too unpredictably to be rushing into the job market right now, I did look at job listing for the first time since getting back. I'm thinking about buying a book to help with the resume building (or should I just do it online?) before I actually start sending anything out. Until then, I have tons of little things I can do around my own house until then.

A part of me feels completely disappointed in myself right now. Before my uncle passed, when I would talk to people, visitors wondering what I felt was next for me, I would tell them that I was going to continue to help my folks as much as possible but I wanted to try to find a job just for the money so I could start saving and start paying down my loans. I thought by now I would either have a job or be completely disheartened by all the job-rejection I was facing. But I haven't even be able to get out there and try to be rejected. I just know that I want to take a job that I won't plan on having more than two years, one that pays enough and gives me enough hours that I can save up for a car emergency fund, a first & last months rent & security deposit fund, and a general emergency fund, while also trying to pay down my student loans. I want to be out in two years. And that time period is quickly ticking away.

The grief support group is really nice. Our leader, a Chaplain at the local hospitcal focuses on us having a safe place to discuss our feelings about our loss(es) in that room and encourages us to have both a/a few good friends who understand and will accompny us on our journey of reliving our memories and acknowledging the pain that might come, as well as individual journalling. One of his slogans is that the sooner and more intensely you grieve and stay with the pain, the quicker you will find yourself on the other side, your new normal. I try not to let that give me a free access pass to do nothing but cry all day, but I think it provides a controlled model of how to deal with the pain and work through it. I can't move on and truly give myself to a situation, to a new job, to a new friend, to a new lover, or even to those friends and family and lovers in my current life, if I don't work through this grief.

But, on the other hand, I still have quite a bit of a lost feeling. That's why I wanted to share this new-ish song. The video is kinda cute, all the lip-synching. And I know Sara Bareilles is a bit too pop from some of my readers, but what the hell. This song really captures how I feel and I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy. And I hope all my friends out there know that I care about them, I haven't forgotten about them, and that I'll make me way back around to them when times here aren't so tight. Thank you to all my friends and family who have stuck around and continue to stick around.

Lyrics - Uncharted - by Sara Bareilles
No Words
My years won't make any room for them, oh.
And it don't hurt
Like anything I've ever felt before

This is no broken heart
No familiar scars
This territory goes uncharted

Just me
In a room sunk down in a house in a town
And I don't breathe
Though I never meant to let it get away from me

Now I have too much to hold
Everybody has to get their hands on gold
And I want... uncharted

Stuck under the ceiling I made.
I can't help the feeling I'm going down
Follow if you want. I won't hang around
Like you'll show me where to go
I'm already out of foolproof ideas
So don't ask me how
To get started
It's all uncharted

Each day
I'm countin' up the minutes til I get alone
Cause I can't stay
In the middle of it all.
It's nobody's fault

But I'm so low
Never knew how much I didn't know
Oh, everything is uncharted

I know I'm gettting nowhere
When I only sit and stare like...
I'm going down
Follow if you want. I won't just hang around
Like you'll show me where to go.
I'm already out of foolproof ideas so don't ask me how
To get started
It's all uncharted.

Jump start my kaleidoscope heart
I love to watch the colors fade
They may not make sense
But they sure as hell made me

I won't go as a passenger, no
Waiting for the road to be laid
Though I may be going down
I'll take in flame over burning out

Compare where you are to where you wanna be
And you'll get nowhere

I"m going down
Follow if you want. I won't hang aruond.
Like you'll show me where to go.
I'm already out of foolproof ideas so don't ask me how to get started
It's all uncharted.

I'd Tell You But You're Dead

2011-03-22T20:12:00.003-05:00

I think one of the hardest phenomenon to get over when you lose someone, whether it's a break-up or a death, is that you are so used to talking to them, telling them things, sharing things with them that you think they would like to know or like to hear about.

Monday I called my mom, who isn't going back to work until next week, just to see what she was up to, as she wasn't at home when I woke up. She said that she had went to the bank to cash in the last of my grandparents' savings bonds and she felt....kinda lost, I guess, though that's not what she said, because usually she would call my uncle and tell him about how much money it came out to be (as the money was supposed to be evenly divided), etc. But now there's no one to call.

One of the blogs I follow, Racialicious posted about this independent black film that is getting a good deal of GREAT early press, called I Will Follow. The post had embedded a trailer, but, as I tend to read blog posts through google reader, either on my phone or on computers with VERY slow internet connections or while watching something else on television, so I usually have to go back at a later date to watch videos and it took me awhile to get to this trailer. But it made me want to see the movie even more, even though I think I'll have to bring a box of tissues. From both the trailer and the website's description, it's the day in the life of a woman who has just lost her aunt, who she was very close to, and the twelve people that day who help her find her way amid the mourning and grief. In the little blurb on his front page, Roger Ebert writes: " "I Will Follow" doesn't tell a story so much as try to understand a woman. Through her, we can find insights into the ways we deal with death. In one way or another, every emotion in this wonderful independent film is one I've experienced myself. Grief, of course. But also anger, loneliness, confusion and a sense of lost direction. Above all, urgent conversations you have in your own mind with someone who is no longer alive. How many people, now dead, have you wanted to ask questions you should have asked when they were alive?"

Which is funny, in a weird, sad way, because the first thing I wanted to do once I watched the trailer was to call or text Ms. Kee and tell her about it, because I know she would love this movie, because I know it would speak to her in so many ways, just as it speaks to me, but even more than that because it is directly rooted in the black community and how black families deal with loss. But I can't tell call or text her. Because she's dead.

Then I wanted to call my uncle to talk about how hard it is to want to share something that someone else would love so much, how hard it is to want to share something with someone you were so close to in so many ways. But I can't call him either. Because he's dead too.

Though I haven't seen the movie, I feel much like its main character must feel.

I miss you all so much. So so so much.

He's Gone

2011-03-16T15:38:00.002-05:00

It's been almost two weeks and I still don't really know how to write about his passing or my own grief. I wrote something for his funeral but it was more a comedic tribute to the man I grew up with than anything that dealt with how I feel about him or about losing him. I'm writing this in the bright light of day because I lose all comprehension at night when I even think about writing. I think I'd end up with a stream-of-consciousness piece that maybe even I couldn't understand. But during the day, though I'll still cry (am crying), I know I'll push through it to do something, anything. I have an easier time convincing myself that the crying jag, brought on by some little thought connected by 100 degrees of separation from my uncle, will end. As everythig does.

I think I don't want to write because I don't want to feel what I know I do feel and I don't want to know those things that I'm avoiding feeling so hard that I can't even touch them or name them. You know, I've always thought that those pain questionaires that doctors and nurses ask you about were so arbitrary as to be useless. "Is the pain stabby or shooting? Aching or cramping?" I don't know, motherfucker. It just fucking hurts! Are you feeling sad? Lonely? Bitter? Angry? Guilty? Confused? Useless? Lost? Afraid? YES and then tons of other things that I don't even know the words for.

And what feels like it's equally as bad as all the expected grief is that I just want to move on. I just want everything to finally be like a normal life for just a little bit. I want to be done with estates and storage units. I want to just get a stupid, pain in the ass job, working 40 hours a week like a good little American zombie, at least for a little while. Not have to think. Just be pushed along with the flow of things. Set up a 2 year plan for getting out of debt and out of town, before my parents' health fails and I'm back in this same spot again. Use most dollars from my zombie job to do this. But I just want things to be normal. For the first time in my whole goddamn life, I want things to be normal. I want to be normal. I want to have not spent the last four years losing so much of what I love, watching them slowly die. I don't want to be wiser, deeper, more experienced. I want to go back to the day before my uncle was diagnosed with cancer and live a life where that never happens. Which leads to a great deal of guilt, of course. I mean, what a selfish little bitch, right?

But narcistic, exhibitionistic writers are still who they are and I still had to write something when a major life event occurs. Thanks for bearing with me.

End of Life Care

2011-02-16T21:45:00.002-06:00

No matter how long life is or how long it seems, there will still never be enough time.

I can't count the number of times I've chastised a friend, telling them that, for most of us, life is so much longer than we give it credit for when we are 24 (their current age). Not only will you meet so many people you can't even imagine now but you'll be offered so many opportunities that you can't even imagine at this point, if you just leave yourself open to it. On the other hand, you can never imagine how long 50 years can seem until you're brushing your teeth next to someone you've grown to hate and loath over those fifty years (hell, even 50 minutes.) And 50 years can't go by quicker than when it's the right person, a person who improves with age in parallel to you. And despite all that is happening now, I know that life is long. So very long. Which means that we have to live with the hurt and suffering just that much longer.

All this medical stuff with my uncle never fully makes sense. I thought that when he came back home this last time, mid-January, I thought that my uncle was classified as "hospice," which was why we were getting all this care. No. See, he was classified as "home health care," on a schedule to show us all how to take care of him, check up on him, etc, but see there was this drug, called a targeted agent, which we talked the insurance into giving to him as a last ditch effort, but my uncle was on the fence about taking it at all, as no one could say that it would actually improve his quality or quantity of life. My uncle kept saying that he'd think about starting it once he felt a bit better but he never really felt better. But if you are on an active treatment regiment, you aren't on hospice. No one really explained this to us until probably Friday, less than a week ago. So we were all thinking about this, what we wanted to do, etc.

But the time for thinking ran out. Yesterday, my uncle started having some really intense pain. The immediate release drugs didn't touch it. My mother was 2.5 hours away, but just about to leave Suburb of Slightly Smaller Midwestern City. My uncle's boyfriend was scrambling to get all the info the hospital might need, to call the right people, to "Where the hell is that ambulance!" (So playing the slightly less dramatic version of my grandmother.) I was just holding my uncle's hand, trying to calm him down, get him to breathe, find out exactly where the pain was. Once at the ER, the doctors, including one we have a previous relationship with, we got the news that you don't really want to hear. My uncle was doing poorly. While my uncle's original living wills, DNRs, etc, said that he did not want extraordinary measures, people can and do change their mind when faced with a very caring but blunt doctor saying, "This is the end. I can do all these things, use the paddles, crack your chest (which will probably completely obliterate your ribs because of the cancer), put in a trach, all that stuff to keep you alive, but you won't be any better than you are right now and we won't be able to treat the cancer at all. OR we can treat your pain, either at home or at a home-y hospice center, though you will probably pass more quickly and be more aware of both the good and the bad of your situation." Though I have a whole other discussion about how much consent you can really get from someone in so much pain, their body wracked with disease, and on a huge amount of narcotics, I am glad that my uncle is making this decision for himself, though with his family, doctors, and social workers. He did not chose the first option. Right now, he is at the hospital, being stabilized, and deciding whether he wants to do hospice at home or at a hospice center.

But there really isn't enough time. One social worker, weeks ago, said that he knew people on hospice for a year or more, that they took trips. Hospice generally covers people who the doctors think might not last for more than 6 months, but that's just an average and people go one way or another. The way things had been going around my uncle's house, I thought we'd have time. We, my mom, my uncle, my uncle's boyfriend, and I, were just getting a rhythm down, moving stuff in so we were comfortable too. But it looks like we don't have that kind of time.

Doctors don't always come out and tell you things. They sneak things into other sentences. The Dr We Like said to my uncle "I wish I could keep you hear in the hospital and watch over you myself but there are more critical patients that could use this bed for the 7-10 days you'd be here."

10 Days. It's never enough.

Forgiving God

2011-02-11T01:29:00.002-06:00

[Warning: Possibly offensive to religious, especially Christian, people. I'm not trying to hurt or offend you, just work out my own issues. If your religion is valid for you, helps you, works for you, and doesn't hurt or oppress others, then I sincerely think that is great for you.]

Keep your heart above your head and your eyes wide open
So this world can't find a way to leave you cold
You're not the only ship out on this ocean
Save your strength for things that you can change
Forgive the one's you can't.
You gotta let it go. - "Let It Go," Zac Brown Band

So I was listening to this song on my way out to my uncle's Monday night when I had a sort of epiphany. Or at least it felt like one at the time. If I would have pulled the car over and made my thumbs move fast and furious, maybe I could have gotten across exactly what kind of weight I felt lifted off my shoulders at the time, the new kind of light it shown on me at the time, but I didn't and the farther I get away from the incident, the less it looks at all impressive. But I'm a writer and I don't have many people to talk to about this, so I'm going to try to make some sense of it here.

First off, I should probably give a bit of background, for those who don't know:

A. A quick refresher on God/s, religion, and me: Christian parochial school taught me to question things, just not it, plus I felt my sexuality was bumping heads with Paul's lack thereof. Also, I could never find enough to back up my faith in a higher being. So atheism and exploration it was. Since my late teens, I've been drawn to the ideas behind Buddhism as a life and moral philosophy and meditation as a practice, while I'm about as "practicing" as most people born Catholic are practicing Catholicism right now.

On the other hand, I did grow up in a Christian culture and household and those ways, assumptions, and quick-go-to's/ easy answers are still with me. ("God never gives you more than you can handle." "That dead person is in a better place now." etc)

B. My uncle's health is... if not worse than when I last wrote about it, it is significantly different than it was until a few months ago. Within less than a month, he's lost the ability to use his legs or feel normally below the nipple line. We've been told that further spinal surgery is out of the question, by a neurosurgeon with a bedside manner that House would appreciate. Officially, we're kinda in a limbo. I just found out today that he's not classified as hospice or palliative care because my uncle is still on the fence about trying this last ditch 'targeted agent chemo drug', because he's worried it'll just make him sicker without giving him any better quality or quantity of life. Right now, he is at home, being taken care of by my mother and his boyfriend, with a bit of help from me, and a guiding hand, for a few more weeks, from a local home health care provider, though, unless his doctors transfer him to hospice status, the time we will have their help is quickly running out. Mostly, right now, he is confined to an adjustable bed in the living room, which doesn't allow for much privacy, though we are trying to get him up in the wheelchair we have right now, so he can sit up, and we'll get him outside in the wheelchair once the weather isn't too bad. We're talking about converting one of his vehicles so we can drive him around in the wheelchair and we're also talking about getting him a motorized wheelchair that will compensate for his balance issues. But much of our time is taken up with everyday care and, even if we had all the tech in the world, my uncle only has so much energy, so he couldn't be go-go-go all the time. This is a downhill climb and we're mostly just happy when he's not in a great amount of pain, when he's well fed, and when he's clean and can just relax a bit. He requires a great deal of care. One person always has to be here with him, two is preferred for help in moving him, and three is one extra, which can always be useful.

So we're caught up.

Last Sunday and Monday, a part of me wasn't sure I could go back to BFE [short-hand, slang for middle of nowhere, what I'll be calling where my uncle lives very often] from Suburb of Slightly Smaller Midwest City. I really shouldn't have gone on the trip out there anyway. My goals were to pick up my extra prescriptions and to see TyRoy, but Mom could have grabbed my drugs on her trip before mine and first snow and then illness prevented me from seeing TyRoy, so I spent most of the week in a haze of depression and weird sleep patterns and food deprivation. Never shoulda gone in the first place. But that's a different story, I guess.

So I wasn't sure I could go back. Mentally, emotionally. In the beginning, my uncle's health situation just made me mad, not in the "why the fuck is he sick? This is so inconvenient way," but in "This is so fucking unfair. My uncle deserves better. He deserves a long and happy and healthy life. And how dare you people out there be happy and healthy and smiley when my uncle is dying!" Now, sadness has been added to that mix of emotions. But still mostly mad. Like "I wanna beat the living hell out of someone" mad. So I get mad and/or sad, cry, pull myself together and say, "Ok, what can I do about how I feel or about any of this situation that I'm not already doing?" Annnnnddd, I get nothing but more angry. And I'm working on my own version of a volume 2 for Everclear's "Why I Don't Believe In God." Maybe that should be "why I don't believe in God but he's the only one I can be mad at so I'm feeling kinda helpless and fucked." That helplessness just reinforces itself, makes me feel like I'm not only helpless in the larger situation, but helpless in small ways, like I can't actually be useful out here in BFE in my uncle's everyday care, when I know that isn't true, when I know that the opposite is in fact true and that, without me, my mother and my uncle's boyfriend don't get a break unless I'm here to help.

Also, I tend to curl up into the fetal position or turn to martyrdom when faced with immovable objects and complete helplessness. If I do believe in God, that He's omnipotent and the cause of everything, and I believe that He is the cause of this, then I feel pretty goddamn helpless in the face of that. And I feel pretty goddamn mad that anyone would do this to anyone else, much less do this to me and my family.

Then, after I had forced myself into the car and into starting the drive, I was listening to that Zac Brown Band song, so full of 12-step-isms that I am thoroughly familiar with and something hit me about forgiveness.

Several years ago, I watched an Oprah episode where she described forgiveness as something you give to someone else, not because what they did was ok and not because they deserve it, but because you deserve to be out from under the weight of their wrong. Like I can only hope that someday my first real boyfriend, ex-T, can forgive me for cheating on him, not because I deserve it or because I'm sorry, though I am the latter though probably not the former, but because I don't want him to live his whole life bogged down by what I did to him, being wronged twice, carrying that second one throughout your whole life. And someday I hope I can forgive my biological father for abandoning me, not because he's sorry (probably isn't), not because he deserves to be forgiven (probably doesn't), but just because I don't want to carry the weight of what HE did wrong to me. So you forgive for yourself, so you are less burdened.

So, if God exists and he did all this shit, why doesn't he deserve forgiveness too? I'm not helpless against him. He fucked me over. And He should be happy to have my forgiveness.

When I tried to share this with Sir, he brought up "forgiveness=acceptance." I see where he was trying to go, but I'm not sure it's where I was going. I accept what is going on with my uncle. It's a bit hard not to, when you're right there seeing it everyday, when just before his 40th birthday your once vital intelligent uncle can't balance his chest well enough to sit on the edge of a bed much less go drive one of the cars he loves. So I accept, as much as anyone can, and I try not to delude myself about any of his conditions.

No, forgiveness is about having something to push back against. Someone who did something wrong and needs me. Forgiveness is about having power over something.

Guests, Not Tenants

2011-01-22T03:30:00.004-06:00

I probably shouldn't be writing this, but, I'm a writer, or at least I like to think of myself as a writer so I felt the need to share. Maybe that make me more an exhibitionist than a writer, but I'll split the difference with you, if you'll just read.

The last month, has been a sort of barely controlled chaos. Not the kind of chaos that people like me thrive on, ones were we can make lists and prioritize and work our fingers to the bone until the chaos has been turned into order, sparkling beautiful order. No, this chaos is run by outside forces. Just as you get your mind around one thing and start to plan, start to make those lists, just then you get a new piece of information that blows those old plans out of the water. Sometimes, it is a new bit of information from the doctors, that the doctors looked over the new data and decided on a new course of treatment. Other times, it is a change in "the patient"s condition, which changes all the plans, all the treatment plans.

Monday, as I was driving back out to Podunk Town to see my uncle, my mother told me that my uncle's boyfriend had called an ambulance to take him to the local hospital because my uncle had gone from shaky, but able to walk with a walker that afternoon, to not being able to walk at all. Mom was rushing there behind me. We did the hospital merry-go-round because Podunk Hospital's MRI was down so late at night, so we went to Shitty Capital City's Hospital where a neurosurgeon with the bedside manner of a scorpion informed my uncle, his partner, my mother, and I, at 4am, that someone should have told us a long time ago that any and all surgical options were closed to him now and we shouldn't be talking to him but to a radiation specialist.

All the cancer docs talk to each other. My uncle gets moved back to Podunk Hospital, which is closer to his home, his friends, to his oncologist. Snow comes quickly and shows us that "closer" is a relative term, as I'm snowed into the trailer shortly after my uncle's boyfriend and my mom leave to visit the hospital. A Long unplowed driveway and unpaved unplowed roads mean I'm fucked. I so want to re-arrange things, for it to be easier for my uncle to navigate when he gets home, but I don't know where to start and, as he's kinda got that hoarder personality, I worry he'll get upset that I moved his stuff.

My second day of being stuck in the house and I'm getting a little antsy. Should have put in a movie or tv show on dvd but the couch puts me to sleep, though only when I'm not supposed to be sleeping. I took the garbage out. Then I decided to sweep the snow off the cars. It had already started on it's own, but I wanted to help it along. My thought was just to sweep off the car I would drive if I decided to drive anywhere. But then I started thinking about my uncle and my grandpa and how they wouldn't want their cars covered in snow, even if they couldn't go anywhere at all. And then I started crying. Oh, yeah, and then my neighbor showed up.

"Um, so you planning on going anywhere?"

Sniffle. "No, just needed something to do."

"Ok, well, if you don't feel like cooking tonight, you can come on in. I'm sure Candy [his wife] has plenty of leftovers."

Sniffle. Full on snot. "No, I think I'm ok."

Manly pause where he tried to decide what the hell to do with this crying chick. "Um, are you sure you're ok? Cause you can come on inside. Candy's inside."

Through full on tears, "Yep, I'm fine. Thanks alot though. Just gonna finish these cars then I'll go inside." Obviously, work makes me feel better.

Finally all the roads are plowed and I go up to see my uncle. My mom and my uncle's boyfriend are already there. My 'cousin' drives with me to the hospital and my uncle's boyfriend's mother and her bff show up just when we do. Talk about visitor overload, huh? Just before I arrive, my mom has a meeting with a social worker, who tells her that my uncle's insurance might not want to pay for the three day rehabilitation program which would teach my uncle how better get around, in and out of the wheelchair, as, while no one is saying it, is seems obvious that there isn't much hope that he is going to walk again. They may not want to pay because my uncle might not be able to do the rehabilitation, might not have the energy, might not have the ability. (To teach us how to do all this stuff, we'll have the home health care nurse, which is cheaper.) Ok, ok, ok, I'm along so far.

So that my uncle can have a bit of rest before his dinner, we (my mom, my uncle's boyfriend, my 'cousin,' and myself) sit in a waiting area. I wanted to start making plans, when are we gonna move this, where is this gonna go, how long before things are set up for my uncle to come home, how long before those of us who are taking care of him are settled in, can start looking for work. The last two are questions that get skirted around. No one will really look me in the eye when I talk about when I'm moving in, where we'll move the stuff that's currently in the closet so I can use that closet.

"Honey, I think that for right now we should think of ourselves more like guests at his house than tenants." That's when my mom finally met my eyes. I could see what she couldn't say, but I couldn't let it go unsaid.

"Because he won't last long enough for us to move in." She could only nod.

I got up and walked away. I made a few phone calls, but no one picked up. I was a bit relieved. I sent out a text and hir well-intentioned response fell flat. I wanted to talk to everyone but I also felt like no one could or would understand. "Now she's feeling more alone than she ever has before." (BFF) I need to talk but I'm not even sure what I have to say. All I know is that I hope I can stay strong enough, long enough to let this be about my uncle, about our family, not about me. And this was so much easier when I had someone I was physically intimate with. Oh my gods, so much easier.

I'm back at my folks house, in the Suburb of the Smallish Midwestern City. Mom needed to come back, replenish her supplies, as she had packed in a hurry for one night. I'm working on my 6th load of laundry.

I had an envelop with money that I was holding back when an acquaintance of mine finally got her own car, to help with car insurance or what have you. Not a big surprise, but that friendship kinda went kaput and the money is being re-purposed. Now the writing on the outside of the envelop says, "Funeral Outfit."

Loserdom

2011-01-09T22:32:00.004-06:00

For most of my life, I've wanted desperately to be anywhere else, doing anything other than what I was doing. When I was younger, this meant that I rarely got to enjoy what I was doing, as my head was always thinking of the life I'd have once I'd gotten where I wanted to be. In recent years, that's also been combined with wondering how my life might be different, better, "if only," if only I had stuck out that college, that job, that relationship. I always knew intellectually that most people went through this to some extent, but I'd never had someone really confirm it until I talked to a friend tonight.

I fell in love with Buddhism mostly because it was centered on the one thing I found so difficult - being completely present in my everyday life.

It seems to me that sometimes when you really want to be something, fit, intelligent, kind, prestigious, you might start out working really hard but you don't realize that you've made it until well past when you've actually made it, until you realize that the thing you worked so hard but still couldn't get quite right has now become second nature. A big reason I kept wanting to reach out to Sir was because I had started to realize that I had become many of the things he and I had wanted me to become. I didn't really know when it happened or exactly how it happened and I know it hasn't really lead to the life we/I had imagined it would, but, nevertheless, I was molded that way, it seems, when I wasn't paying attention.

This week, I am staying with my uncle, at his place in Podunk Midwest Mapdot. Someone has to give him two large syringes of antibiotics three times a day for six days. Seems silly to stay in a hospital with beds that only torture his weakened back and fractured ribs just to make sure he gets this medication three times a day.

So I'm here this week. And, depending on... well, a great many things, I might be moving out here, to my uncle's or someplace cheap and close. Yes, it's be because it is what is needed an what fits best for my family. But it would also be what I want. For all I might not have followed through on or achieved, getting up at 4am to hook my uncle up to a pump that delivers antibiotics through the chemo port in his chest seems to erase all that loserdom. I could be a bestselling, critically-acclaimed writer of literary novels, but if I didn't do this, I'd be a fucking loser. And, just like that, where I'm needed and where I am are the only place I want to be. And I truly don't care about where else I could be or who with or anything about where my decisions and actions might have led me because, while I wish it wasn't needed and I wouldn't choose why it's needed, there's no place else I want to be, probably for the first time in my life.

December 28th

2010-12-28T22:58:00.002-06:00

Three years ago, at six in the morning on his 77th birthday, my grandfather died, surrounded by his family, his wife, two of his children, his one grandchild, and their partners. We have all missed him very much ever since.

Everyday I think of him and almost as often something else reminds me of him. Like how he would have liked my gerry-rigged Christmas light set up. Like the Christmas song my uncle's boyfriend told us about, "I Farted on Santa Claus." Like thinking of him or my grandma looking for something in a store when I decided to follow through on helping a little old Asian lady who was looking for Christmas cards yesterday in the birthday card section. She was probably somebody's grandma and they would want to know that a (somewhat) decent person didn't just walk away.

I really miss you Grandpa. If there is a heaven, I hope you and Grandma and Knothead and Butch and your mom all are there together. I love you and I'll never forget you.

If You Think That I Could Be Forgiven

2010-12-25T23:53:00.003-06:00

I was 15 when the Counting Crow's song "A Long December" was released. While my memory might not be accurate, it seemed like the video was in heavy rotation during the late fall and seemingly constantly by the time December rolled around. I loved the song, in the melancholy way I loved most songs back then, and I often cried when I heard the song or watched the video. Every year since, in the time period between Christmas and New Year's, I've sought out the song, to me a call to contemplate the year that is passing and plan for the year ahead. I guess it's my sadder version of Auld Lang Syne.

I drug it out tonight during the car trip home from Christmas dinner at my uncle's, on a mix disk made for me by Sir. "And if you think that I could be forgiven, I wish you would." Hmpt. Early on in our long-distance over-the-phone courtship, I had told him how much I loved that song. His response made me tear up: "You know the line about looking across a crowded room to see the way that someone lights up, stands out, when maybe no one else really sees it? That's how I felt when I first met you." It was probably one of the sweetest things anyone had every said to me.

I haven't written about it here yet, though I plan to, but a really good friend of mine, I'll call her Miss Kee, died recently, suddenly, unexpectedly, not from an accident or outside force, but seemingly from what I'm choosing to call a massive sudden body failure. As with anyone who dies, I wish I'd spent more time with her, though we were both kinda flakey and moody so it was difficult for us to both get our shit together enough at the same time to hang out. And, stereotypically, I've tried to evaluate things in my life that I want to change, so I make my own life more meaningful, more happy, more how I want it. Also, with one less living friend, it makes me wonder about getting back in touch with friends I've lost touch with. Or lost through my own stupidity.

"And if you think that I could be forgiven, I wish you would." This is where Sir comes back in. When I heard that line tonight, I thought of him. I wondered if the power of a song we shared, of that line, might break through the "you're dead to me" Sicilian mindset that his family has for those they feel have wronged them. But, well, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I wasn't really sure I wanted forgiveness for what he feels is the wrong I've done him. For those just joining the soap opera in progress, I revealled on this blog, which I knew Sir's current girlfriend read, that he was seeing someone else and that he had also cheated on her with me. I'm fairly certain that Sir felt this was all done out of jealousy, that I always wanted to be back with him, never liked his girlfriend, and, in a bipolar snit, put his business online to break them up. And I won't say that's all untrue. I would contend that I thought he and this girlfriend were a bad match for several reasons and that him moving even further away from where she lived, where he then met another woman, didn't help matters. I can also say that, while I"m not sure exactly what was going on at the moment, I am sure that things with BT and I, who were married at the time, were dramatic and I had probably just found out that he had lied about or was hiding something I felt significant. Since getting married, Sir and I had not had the friendship we had once had, so I didn't feel the loyalty needed to keep a secret of that kind. Most of all, I was tired of what I felt like was rank hypocrisy on his part. Mr Ethical, Mr Sexual-Intercourse-Virginity, Mr Do-the-Right-Thing took a weekend holiday with his new girlfriend while still maintaining the supposedly-exclusive relationship with the first girlfriend. The write-off text from a man who said he'd see me through anything was that I'd "burned that bridge." I probably should have handled it differently, but I think he'd have prefered I didn't handle it at all, didn't call him on his bullshit. I think that was my real sin to him and that's one I cannot repent.

But despite that, it hurts me to think he's mad at me, that he'll feel perpetually wronged by me. Hey, A, self-important much? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think about the people you un-friended in real life, no matter how long ago, or not long ago, and I'm sure you'll find someone that you are still mad at, where you still grind your teeth when you think of them. Granted, that's not everyone, but it's someone. And I don't want to be that for Sir. I also know that I'm more the person now, inside, that I wanted to be when he and I first met, when we spent hours talking about who we wanted to become, than ever before, though I'm not sure how it happened or when it happened. I'm not the person I was when I burned the bridge, even if I still think what he did was wrong and what I did wasn't the worst thing ever. And even though I realize how limiting many aspects of our relationship were, hell how limiting many aspects of his worldview are/were, and I realize that I disagree with a great many things I let slide when we dated and when we were friends, I do miss him, his friendship. (The dating ship has sailed for both of us, I'm sure.) I miss him because it's damn tough to find someone smart enough to talk with and harder still to find someone you can laugh with as well. It's hard to find a very logic based person who can and will apply that to real life situations and be honest about that.

So, audience, what do you think? Should I ask for forgiveness, or, to paraphrase another band (Barenaked Ladies) ask him to just forget if he can't forgive? Do we think he misses my friendship as much as I miss his? Should I go straight to him with my plea?

Life as Majority

2010-09-22T14:22:00.004-05:00

(NB: Anything that is enclosed in brackets [x] inside of someone else's quoted work is my added opinion.)

So I've recently had some drama in my life, even if it is more of an internal struggle over my current situation. While I had hoped I'd be disciplined and kind enough not to open my mouth and spread the misery, I've already failed at that so I figured, fuck it, I might as well write about how I see this playing into a larger social narrative as well as how my past influenced this moment and where I'm pointing my compass from here.

In the last post that I wrote, I brought up the concept of PRIVILEGE. I'd like to start by talking a bit more about that. So last time, I wrote that wikipedia defined privilege this way: "A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth. By contrast, a right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from the moment of birth."

Now I want to add a bit from Tim Wise, one of the foremost (white) American anti-racist thinkers out there. It's from "Denial - Privilege and Life as a Majority." Now I'm going to quote a great deal of it, but it's also worth it just to go to the page and read the whole thing.

"Sometimes it can be difficult, having a conversation with those whose political
views are so diametrically opposed to one's own.

But even more
challenging, is having a discussion with someone who simply refuses to accept
even the most basic elements of your worldview. At that point, disagreement is
less about the specifics of one or another policy option, and more about the
nature of social reality itself.

This is what it can be like sometimes,
when trying to discuss the issue of white privilege with white people. ...

Of course, what is ultimately overlooked is that denial of one's
privilege itself manifests a form of privilege: namely, the privilege of being
able to deny another person's reality (a reality to which they speak regularly)
and suffer no social consequence as a result."

For those who don't know, I am white and that is one of the areas in which I do have privilege. But I think that is why what Tim Wise writes speaks to me. I know I have this white privilege, knew it somewhere inside me long before I knew what the word meant in this context. Maybe I've always been a bit too overly empathetic, but even as a pretty young kid, I hated when things were unfair or unequal. These emotions became magnified when I was 7 and my family moved to a suburb just south of large Midwestern city. Unlike the large but mostly white student population of my former elementary school, black students made up probably 25% of the student body at the small private Christian elementary school outside of the large Midwestern city when I began attending. (The mix was probably 50-50 by the time we moved.) I had a big culture shock, as I'd never really been exposed to black culture. I wouldn't call my family racist, but, like many people of all colors, we tended to partake in culture that reflected us, or at least our skin tone. I could have sang you the soundtrack to the Big Chill, having listened to the tape so often in my mom's car, but I didn't even know what rap was. While the powerful white students in my class didn't give you a second thought if you weren't up to their level of pretty and well-dressed, my black classmates, even the most popular and powerful, would let you in with them, but only after you endured the push-pull of gaining their trust, which meant showing you didn't have a racist molecule in your body. Looking back, I wonder if it wasn't the friendship version of "you either like me for me & don't act like I should be any different, or you never really liked me at all and don't deserve my energy," something my mom drilled into my head about romance with boys, which I wonder if the black students' parents, kids during the Civil Rights Era, drilled into their heads. While I won't say that I left that school with a fully developed racial consciousness or a complete understanding of the psyches of black children, I do credit it with teaching me that minorities are both just like whites and not at all like whites, that every kid I knew was just as deserving of respect as me, whether they were white or black, but that the black students had a different reality, from our history of injustice to minorities to the higher incarceration rates of their older family members to how teachers treated them. It wouldn't be until college that I would actively try to develop my race consciousness, right alongside the gay consciousness I snuck in while in high school and the feminist consciousness that had bloomed during my first Women's Studies course. It's something I'm still working on today and probably will be working on until the day I die.

But being more aware of things means I see more, whereas before I might have had that little "something's off" itch, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Even having read just the same amount of things I have by authors of color, women authors, gay authors, disabled authors, about the ways they have been made to feel less than, about the horribly intrusive and ignorant behavior they've been subjected to, I have started to see that all around me, recognize it, felt my own heart hurt. But I've been a 'humorless, too sensitive, too PC, stick up her ass bitch' for as long as I can remember and I started calling people on using words like "gay" and "fag" as derogatory terms when I was a senior and just coming out. By my senior year, I had a modicum of respect from my classmates because I was the go-to study-buddy girl. I also came armed with facts. So when I challenged them saying it, bringing up that it often felt to a gay person like the equivalent of kike or the n-word, I also told them that, in this classroom with 15 people, statistically, there would be 1.5 gay people. If I was the .5, as a bi-person, who was that other person that they probably just hurt, that they probably dug the knife in everyday? Look, I have no delusions that it changed what they said when they were in the hall or another class. But it got the speaker to think and, if there was another gay person in that classroom, I hope they got the message that they were worth being stood up for.

But now I'm older, have less clout, am a bit less likely to open my mouth. In part, it's because of this nifty little trick we blog people call derailing. This page, Derailing for Dummies, which is completely hilarious, sums it up pretty well:

"You know how it is. You’re enjoying yourself, kicking back and relaxing at the
pub or maybe at the library; or maybe you’re in class or just casually surfing
the internet,
indulging in a little conversation. The topic of the conversation is about a
pertinent contemporary issue, probably something to do with a group of people
who fall outside your realm of experience and identity. They’re also probably
fairly heavily discriminated against - or so they claim. The thing is, you’re
having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues.
This knowledge is incontrovertible - it’s been backed up in media
representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also
your own unassailable sense of being right.

Yet all of a sudden
something happens to put a dampener on your sharing of your enviable intellect
and incomparable capacity to fully perceive and understand All Things. It’s
someone who belongs to the group of people you’re discussing and they’re Not
Very Happy with you. Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about
that. They might be a person of colour, or a queer person. Maybe they’re a
woman, or a person with disability. They could even be a trans person or a sex
worker. The point is they’re trying to tell you they know better than you about
their issues and you know that’s just plain wrong. How could you be wrong?

Don’t worry though! There IS something you can do to nip this
potentially awkward and embarrassing situation in the bud. By simply derailing
the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their
experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and
you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down
inside!

Congratulations You Have Privilege!

Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised
People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing
every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits
of every privilege that you have."

Of course, the dynamic also gets trickier when you are a privileged white person telling another privileged white person to please stop using a specific word. It's difficult enough to be, say a gay person politely asking a straight person to please stop using "gay" when they mean "stupid," with the tried and true "but gay people do it!" and "well, I didn't mean it that way, you know I love gay people." When you aren't a part of that marginalized group and can't speak for a majority of ALL OF THEM being offended, and you really don't want to say they are racist, which you might not believe anyway, well, sometimes it just feels like a losing battle. I think this video by J Smooth sums it up pretty well.

But finally, sometimes you just don't want to be the educator, the activist acting civilly. Though Sparky, writing at Womanist Musings, is writing about being a gay man trying to educate straight people, I think it's just as fitting for people educating on ablism, feminism, or racism. (Emphasis mine, not the authors.)

"The point is, I knew where this conversation was going within the first 10
minutes - gods, the first 5 minutes. The opening lines, even. I knew that I was
heading into a long, unpleasant and awkward conversation that was likely going
to throw a lot of straight privilege at me, push a lot of painful buttons and
generally leave me frustrated, tired and feeling like shit. In short, within 5
minutes of the conversation starting I wanted it to end.

How do I know this? Because I've had exactly the same conversation and
variations of this about a squillion times before. All completely
unoriginal, all tiring, all painful and all immensely frustrating. And I'm quite
sure over half have been utterly, completely pointless wastes of my energy and
mental health.

My point?

My point is sometimes I can't do it. And that's a shame because, even if
most failed, I know some of these conversations HAVE worked. I know some
ignorant people who bought a clue, listened and did their best not to do it
again. Yes, it can be productive. Yes it has worked. Yes calmly and reasonably
answering all the ignorant questions you've answered a thousand times or
politely objecting and explaining why something was offensive can and does work.
It's half the reason I ramble so much about sexuality on this LJ.

And sometimes I can't do it. Sometimes I'm tired, I'm in a bad mood or I'm
just sick to the back teeth of the whole damn hetero-normative world, it's
ignorance, it's insensitivity and it's endless reminders that I don't
belong. Sometimes I'm annoyed because it should be damned OBVIOUS
why I don't find that joke funny, or why I get angry at being called
"fag."

These conversations are painful and tiring and frustrating. They're
very personal (they can't help but be), they force me to confront
homophobia and homophobic ignorance head on. They force me to endure it and slog
through it. They force me to be vulnerable. They force me to expose that
vulnerability to someone who, at best, may clumsily trample all over me and at
worst may deliberately do some stomping."

And I'd like to add that I shouldn't have to do that with my friends, with people who know me. Wait, let me sort of take that back. If I have a friend who actually wants to have a conversation about these things, I'm usually up for it. But, when it's not going to be a conversation, when I ask you to please stop using a word, at least around me, especially when you know that there's nothing you are going to say that's going not make it hurt me and nothing I can say to change your opinion about the propriety of that word, do me a favor and just don't fucking say it anymore. "I didn't mean it offensively/racist/sexist/homophobicly" doesn't really matter to me in that context, because intent is not all. Effect factors in and it did hurt or offend someone. And "I'm sorry you were offended" is not actually an apology. It's a deflection which says that the offended party is the one with something wrong, being overly sensitive, reading too much into it, not having a sense of humor, etc. Real apologies admit wrongdoing. Don't try to offer an apology when you aren't actually sorry and/or think you did nothing wrong. I could go on and on, but, in the end, I still get the very clear picture that I'm just an overly sensitive, too PC, humorless bitch. And if you think that's what I am, why would you want to be friends with me?

A friend recently seemed upset that I would want to go out and find friends who shared the same political and social views as me. Her assertion was that she wouldn't want to be friends with people only like her. I agreed then and I still do, in that I wouldn't want all my friends to be replications of myself. (Anyone who thinks that would be cool should see the movie Moon, where Sam Rockwell's character gets into a knock down drag out fight with his... well, I'll just say a man who looks just like him.) But that's not what I want. I just don't want the paragraph above this and I'm hoping that won't happen with people on my own wavelength. Don't know if it'll work out, but I gotta try.

"I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
...I'm moving on"

Character-Building Conflict

2010-08-11T20:06:00.003-05:00

[I'm going to be introducing some new words. Yes, new words. This includes invented singular pronouns, so instead of using 'they' to describe a single person of either sex, I'll use one of these pronouns. SO: Ze=He or She (subject), Hir= Him or Her (object) and His or Her (possessive determiner), Hirs= His or Her (possessive pronoun). Here's the wiki page.]

The ghost of someone's tragedy
How recklessly my time has been spent
They say that it's never to late but you don't get any younger
Well I better learn how to starve the emptiness and feed the hunger
-Watershed by Indigo Girls

So if you hadn't noticed, I haven't really been writing much except my own weird movie reviews. I think in many ways it has been because I haven't had anything to say. I won't say that I haven't been inspired to write, though I haven't been, because, if fiction writing and poetry writing classes have taught me anything, it's that you'll write very little if you only write when you are "inspired." Sometimes you have to create your own inspiration. But there has been nothing really...interesting? No, that's not it. I got it! It's that there has been so little real conflict in my life. Plenty of angst and pity and bickering and pointless arguing. But no real, for lack of a better term, character-building conflict in my life lately. Which has mostly been my fault. I haven't challenged myself. I let everything go. Let my muscles atrophy, including my brain. Until this week, I really haven't let myself face any challenges, other than the challenge of my vacation, which did teach me a great deal about myself, about the friend I travelled with, and helped me get to a better, more independent frame of mind about traveling. And though my anxiety about the outcome of all this sometimes threaten to overwhelm me, I have more energy and feel happier than I have in a long time.

Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize til your agony's your heaviest load
-Watershed by Indigo Girls

When I decide to do something, I just jump in. (Have you heard/read the story about how I got married?) The hardest part of taking a chance, of trying to do anything, for me, is to get over my fear of failing, especially because my previous failures have set me back behind where I started. Right now, with the employment things I'm trying to do, I don't have to worry so much about failure because I will only end up back in my current situation. I recognize the great privilege I have in that I don't currently worry about having to financially provide for my housing, bills, clothes, or transportation. But I'm also taking some romantic chances and the why's and how's are a bit more complicated and less...positive character traits driven than I think my friends realize, than even I realized or wanted to admit to.

You think I wouldn't have him
Unless I could have him by the balls
You think I just dish it out
You don't think I take it at all
You think I am stronger
You think I walk taller than the rest
You think I'm usually wearing the pants
Just 'cause I rarely wear a dress
Well...when you look at me
You see my purpose, see my pride
You think I just saddle up my anger
And ride and ride and ride
You think I stand so firm
You think I sit so high on my trusty steed
Let me tell you
I'm usually face down on the ground
Whenever there's a stampede
-I'm No Heroine by Ani DiFranco

Last summer, I remember MP and I talking about love and sex advice columns. He and I are big fans of Dan Savage. He said that ultimately most of the situations people wrote in about could be solved if people knew they could be happy on their own. If people knew a happiness in being alone, they could then compare it to what their current relationship gave them and leave if it didn't meet or exceed the happiness they had being alone. Also, if they weren't afraid to be alone, then it wouldn't be fear that made them stay in a relationship, but a real desire to be with that person and make that relationship work. It can also give a person leverage in hir situation because ze can tell hir partner that, if things don't change, ze'll leave and mean it, knowing that ze will be alright if hir partner says "ok, bye."

This really range true to me, both then and now. It is also in line with the Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment, which Wikipedia defines as, "a state in which a person overcomes his or her attachment to desire for things, people or concepts of the world and thus attains a heightened perspective." A quick google led me to this quote, "Without any fear of losing what we have, without being pushed and pulled by our inner likes and dislikes, we begin to find increased equanimity and genuine affection," from Urban Monk.

And, just to clarify, I don't think that MP favors being alone over being in a relationship. In fact, as he's been in relationships the whole time I've known him, sometimes several at the same time, I think he prefers them to being alone, but I think that he's suggesting not being so invested in the idea of being with this one person who is the only one and you just can't be alone and no one will every love you again after this person. I also don't think that it means to walk away from relationships you have invested time and energy in just because at that moment you are unhappy. Even the best relationships have unhappiness. Just that a person should look clearly at the relationship, if ze can still be happy with the problems of the relationship, if those problems can ever be solved, when deciding if ze should stay in a relationship, while leaving out a fear of being alone.

If you're not angry
You're just stupid or you don't care
How else can you react
When you know something's so unfair
The men of the hour can kill half the world in war
Make them slaves to a super power and let them die poor

But his perspective is from his life and comes with a great deal of privilege attached to it.

Let me stop a minute. I'm trying to be more consistent in what I talk about and how, so I'm also trying to introduce the best descriptive terms into what I write and how I talk. So let me introduce PRIVILEGE. Here's what wiki says: "A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth. By contrast, a right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from the moment of birth." This can come in the form of male privilege, white privilege, temporarily able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege, class privilege, and I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting. But it has to do with getting "an up" in the world, not because you earned it, but because you are white or straight. Part of privilege is that ze doesn't see the advantage ze has. I just wanted to give a quick overview before I talked about it in this context.

Now to go back to MP. His "be happy being alone so you can just leave" comes from a place of class privilege, mixed with a little male privilege and temporarily able bodied privilege. While his life hasn't always been as financially comfortable as it is now, he's had enough money or few enough financial needs that he actually could just leave for much of his post-collegiate adult life. As a heterosexual male, it is statistically far less likely that he'll be a battered partner, not be able to fend off an attacking partner, or be physically prevented by his partner from leaving. Last we talked, he was able-bodied enough to pack up, move, and leave of his own accord, as well as continue to work to support himself. That is a luxury that many people don't have. If I didn't have my family to fall back on financially, I probably wouldn't have that luxury, no matter how happy I was to be alone. I'm not faulting him for this, just pointing it out.

We don't say everything that we could
So we can say later
Well you misunderstood
I hold my cards up close to my chest
I say what I have to and I hold back the rest
-Anticipate by Ani DiFranco

Baby I love you
That's why I'm leaving
There's no talking to you and there's no pleasing you
-Out of Range by Ani DiFranco

Yes, I do have the privilege to end a romantic relationship at any time. I can't in all honesty say that I am happy being alone, well, not exactly. I'm not invested in having a "relationship" in the traditional sense, don't feel I just have to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. I want to have sex consistently. I would prefer that be with one person, a person who I am friends with, can talk with, can have fun outside the bedroom with. If a more traditional relationship develops from that, I'm going to try not to run from that, but I really try not to push it there if the other person isn't there. But I do push for honest, upfrontness (is that a word?), and full disclosure, on where my partner wants things to go, on where ze is now. While I may need to be less interrogative, I don't think it's too much to ask for.

But I realized that I'm terribly lonely when I probably don't need to be. And that I'm lonely not by my choice but by the choice of another that I'm not supposed to question. I also realized that, no matter how much I love someone, if we fight much of the time, having the same arguments over and over again, I am hurting myself when I don't need to. (I also believe I'm hurting him, but it is not for me to decide for him that he should not be with me.) I've spent so much of my life in relationships that I knew would never work, wasted so much time and energy. I don't want to do it again. I want to move forward, to a better place, to be a better person. And I'm so not a good person to him right now. Pretty sure he thinks I'm a pretty shitty person, in fact. And from where he stands, I'm not sure I disagree with him.

But do you ever wonder through and through
Who's that person standing next to you
And after all the night's apart
Is there a home for a travelling heart
But if I weren't leaving you
I don't know what I would do
But the more I go it seems the less I know
Will the fire still burn on my return
Keep the path lit on the only road I know
Honey all I know to do is go
-Leaving by Indigo Girls

Now we get to the part that doesn't reflect so well on me. Tonight, listening to this song, I also realized that there was probably something else. I've always been restless. Hell, the biggest reason I'm seeking employment right now is so I can save money to move later, when my family doesn't need me here, so I see other places as a citizen not a tourist. One of the things I loved about BT was that I felt he understood, and shared, that restless streak, that wanderer's soul. And, as he wanted to go back to general Army, instead of National Guard, I expected that we'd get shipped around, was happy about it. Being with TyRoy, I knew our relationship had an expiration date, when he got a new billet and had to move. Recently, I thought his actions meant he was pulling away, in anticipation of him leaving. Maybe that was just my hope. Unless asked point blank, TyRoy doesn't talk about when he might leave and he never acknowledges how it would change our relationship, which eventually made me worry he was being all ostrich-y about it. But what I realized tonight is that what I subconsciously always found so attractive in these military men is that they either take you with them to some place new or they leave without you and you get to start a new adventure without the stigma of having your relationship having fail. Yep, horrible but true.

So, in summary, I'm feeling great and inspired, introducing new words and concepts to my blog. I'm excited about job hunting, most of the time, though I don't have much risk in it. I am taking a risk in leaving my romantic situation (unless something miraculous happens) because I'm tired of being lonely, ok (if not happier) with being alone (though I might not be that way for long), and because I'm kinda a bitch who feels more comfortable leaving places and people than sticking around. Hmm. That doesn't sound very inspiring, does it? Oh well.

The Ignorant American Watches Some Foreign Films

2010-08-06T00:26:00.000-05:00

Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Written & Directed by Ari Folman
Animated (but adult themes, content, and cartoon nudity and sex)
Voiced (sometimes by the real people identified in the movie)
Ron Ben-Yishai as himself
Ari Folman as himself
Yehezkel Lazarov as Carmi Cna'an
Mickey Leon as Boaz Rein-Buskila
Watched July 29, 2010

Gomorrah (2008)
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Cast includes
Gianfelice Imparato as Don Ciro
Salvatore Cantalupo as Pasquale
Salvatore Abruzzese as Toto
Carmine Paternoster as Roberto
Based on a "nonfiction novel" by Roberto Saviano
Watched August 5, 2010

A few weeks ago, when I was bored, I told Red Envelop Movie Rentals to bring up movies for me to review, since I thought I'd probably seen movies that I hadn't reviewed on their site, which helps them recommend movies to you. Well, the site started bringing up movies that they had sent to me and that I'd sent back. And I realized that I had not watched so many of them! (The dvd fairy made me backup copies and sent them back, and the dvds await watching.) I also realized how many of those films were foreign language films. (Stupid American, with no foreign language skills.) There's a reason behind this, though not a particularly good one. See, before I decided to blog all the movies I watched, there were many movies I would watch with only one eye, while I did something else, but paying attention with my ears. That means that I didn't watch very many foreign language films. I have been trying to rectify that.

But sometimes watching a category of film you don't typically watch can highlight areas in which you are not educated. This was definitely the case with both of these films, which is why I'm blogging about them together. While these are both very different films on very different subjects, they both highlighted, for me, my lack of knowledge on political and sociological issues of other countries. (My subsequent cursory self-education, via imdb and wikipedia, highlighted how little free memory I have, but that's another issue.) While I doubt that either of these movies were made with a great deal of thought as to if foreign audiences with my same lack of fore-knowledge would be able to easily understand it, I will be giving some thought to that. This is not to say that I think that foreign filmmakers should always, or ever, make sure that stupid American audiences will easily understand their films, though I do wonder how easy our films are to understand to foreign audiences, which does matter as many of our films, especially big budget action movies, make huge profits overseas. Then again, Hollywood action movies aren't typically made for us to stretch our minds.

I watched the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir first. It is an animated film, but a very adult-oriented animated film, complete with deaths in war, nudity, and even animated sex. But the medium of animation is well-suited to a film about the nature of memory where character recount what they remember about a war that happened over 20 years ago. The film is re-creates filmmaker Ari Folman's journey to either recover his own memories of or to be told what happened around him during the 1982 Lebanon War. He starts this journey after a friend recounts a recurring dream in which his own role in the war haunts him. While Folman tells his friend that he doesn't remember hardly anything about the war, the friend says that it is Folman's duty as a filmmaker to tell this story. That night, Folman has his own dream about the war, just a fragment of a memory, which is the thread that he follows in an attempt to regain knowledge of what he was involved in. Of course, there's a reason that he blocked out all of these memories, as he witnessed and did nothing to stop an atrocity that this war would be known for. For me, this movie was beautiful, imaginative, and moving, though not in a way that leaves on feeling good afterwards. While it did deal with recent Israeli history, which is an area fraught with emotions and opinions and contradictions, I felt that it was much more about the journey of these men, but especially Folman, to regain memory, to acknowledge their role(s) in the war and atrocities of it, and, if possible, process that knowledge. The movie makes no attempt to assert that this war, or any war, is a "good war." The movie also doesn't make an assertions or take positions about Israeli politics. It just focuses on these memories of this small group of men.

Early on, the viewer gets the idea that this movie is about a conflict in which Israeli forces were in Lebanon and that it happened in the 1980s. But there is no overarching exposition. Folman does not in his voice over say, "So I went to see Carmi, who I'd served with in the IDF during the 1982 Lebanon War." When he mentions the Phalanges, he doesn't elaborate on who they are or how they fit into the war, because his movie's target audience is other Israeli's who already know all this history. I think that if you are a viewer who comes to the film just to be "entertained," you might have some issues with this, but I do think that it only takes a bit of viewing (instead of reading) comprehension to put together enough of the pieces for it to make sense. I think that the movie is perfectly enjoyable to someone coming in with very little knowledge of Israel's recent military history, as long as they don't mind thinking just a little bit. In a way, as the movie is about (re)gaining knowledge, it seems appropriate to me to be putting these pieces together while Folman puts together the pieces on screen.

On the other hand, I found putting the pieces together less rewarding as I watched the Italian film Gomorrah, though that might have been a matter of expectations. Gomorrah is a movie about gang life in Naples, which leads one to expect a sort of typical "mafia movie." I've seen it compared to the movie City of God. Ummm, yeah, not really either of those. While it is based on a nonfiction novel which follows several different people who either work for or are somehow involved with the Camorra crime family. The movie follows five of these stories, which don't overlap or interact, which I think most (American) viewers would expect. I did think that the movie presented a gritty criminal underworld well, but it felt without context to me. I'm sure part of that was just my ignorance of the socioeconomic situation of Naples and Italy in general, but the movie does not provide any sort of exposition or context for those not in the know. One of the stories centers on a middle-aged money man, who we see visiting various apartments, giving them money, which most do not seem particularly thankful for. It is never explained WHY he is giving this money to people. (One imbd commentor said it was money paid to those who had lost relatives to death or jail because of their involvement with the crime syndicate, which sounds like as good of an explanation as any.) Towards the end of the movie, a war breaks out between the main crime group and what the subtitles identify as "secessionists." Once again, being lazy, I'll rely on the imdb commentors who said that this is in reference to a real gang war in the 1980s between different alliances or clans within the larger crime family. But I think that a great deal of this movie was lost on me because I don't live with this in my papers everyday. While this movie got quite a bit of critical praise, it just didn't strike me. Maybe I'll get the book, read it, then rewatch the film. Right after I watch all the other films the dvd fairy left me.

2012 (or how I learned to stop thinking and love disaster)

2010-07-29T07:21:00.002-05:00

2012 (2009)

Directed (and co-written by) Roland Emmerich

Cast includes
John Cusack as Jackson Curtis
Amanda Peet as Kate Curtis
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Adrian Helmsley
Danny Glover as President Thomas Wilson

Running time: 2 hrs 38 mins (to paraphrase the movie's tagline: You were warned!)

Watched alone on DVD, early morning July 27, 2010

I got this movie from RedMailMovieRental (yeah, you know who I mean, but I'm trying for no free press) because my parents say the preview and said they would like to see it. I'm a sucker for an easy way to please my parents, what can I say. While my parents initially watched it without me, I thought I'd pop it in and watch it before I returned it. For those who don't know what this movie is about, it's pretty simple: The world is going to end and a mostly decent guy who's come up short with his family goes to heroic lengths to save them and others that they stumble upon along the way. This time the world is being destroyed by... um, I'm not really sure, but I think it's mostly the earth's tectonic plates/crust shifting, causing volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis. And the governments all over the world have pitched in money, artwork, rich people, and good genes to make some huge ships to save enough of humanity to rebuild society, but of course only a few people know about it and the plan only saves a small percentage of people.

I'd like to take a really quick sidebar to say that I never have, and probably never will, claim to be consistent in my little reviews of movies. As of right now, I'm not a professional film critic nor am a professional film scholar. And, not that I have to tell my RL friends but, my mood and events at the time really effect how I see any and all works of art. Also, for me, I try to take into account what the movie is trying to accomplish vs what I think it accomplishes, in addition to if I think the movie is good as a film, as a work of art. For example, I think that Inception was a better, more thought-provoking, more beautiful, more crafted film than 2012, but I also know that wasn't what 2012 was trying to be. On the other hand, as cheesy and emotionally obvious as 2012 could be, I still felt something during it, almost cried a couple times, whereas I didn't feel that emotion investment in Inception. I just wanted to be clear that I do not claim to be consistent. Or rational. Ever. Just take that into account.

So back to the movie. As I put the movie in, I saw the running time and thought, "Oh, shit. What have I gotten myself into? This is going to be so long and tedious and ugh. Oh well. What else am I doing?" Early on, I noticed things in the movie that just.... wouldn't happen. In one scene, though much later in the movie, one of the US bigwigs going to the ships, in semi-rural China, gets a call on his cell from his friend in India's cell. This is after most of the US and probably Europe has been wiped out. Um... I don't think so. Ok, so things like this and other too-coincidental incidents made me just throw all notions of "I know I need to suspend a bit of disbelief but it still needs to be realistic" out the window, so I just enjoyed what it was, CGI-destructo-fest. At which point, I actually enjoyed it. It was pretty good CGI of things we'll never see, as even if this scenario played out, there's very little chance we'd see all the things we do in the movie before we died. So if you want to enjoy a disaster action movie and are willing to suspend all disbelief, this is a pretty good movie. Later on that morning, I realized that day would have also been my grandmother's birthday. I really think she would have enjoyed this movie. While she complained about them making movies "too loud" these days, she always really liked action movies, even action movies these days, though she often "tutu"-d the crassness and everything-out-there-ness of most comedies and dramas "these days," after maybe 1985 or so. This movie is probably definitely for those people (like my parents and my grandma) who always asked me why I couldn't just enjoy the goddamn move, why did I have to think about it.

BUT I do want to touch on something that a few critics pointed out at the time the movie hit theaters. Though I can't remember who it was, I do remember the movie being called "disaster porn" by one critic. I will readily admit that while I watched the movie, I thought that more people in the movie should be more sad that almost all of humanity and all land-based creatures were dying, often in really horrible ways. There were times during the movie when I was sad about the general loss of life happening, even when the movie wasn't pointing that out, was instead pointing out all the really cool action happening. I completely understand what that critic meant. On the other hand, there are many things I enjoy, in all kinds of different weird ways, seeing, but would never ever ever want to happen in real life. Yeah, I got a kick out of seeing Los Angeles destroyed with all that cool CGI, but I no more want that to happen than I want people to be able to navigate my dreams or even for Kristen Bell and Josh Dumiel to find happiness and love together. I love a good horror movie, but I don't actually want killer bloodsucking vampires in real life or ghostly/demonic possession or spree/serial killers. That is one part of the thrill of movies, for me and for many other people as well, so I'm trying not to write this "disaster porn" off too quickly.

The Orphanage

2010-07-22T05:44:00.000-05:00

The Orphanage (2007)

Spanish film - both in language and location

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

Cast includes
Belen Rueda as Laura
Fernando Cayo as Carlos
Roger Princep as Simon
Geraldine Chaplin as Aurora (yep daughter of "that" Chaplin)

***BIG SPOILERS AHEAD*******

So I watched this last night and I'm still thinking about it. Overall, I did really like it, as it built the suspense, didn't use cheap scare tactics (that much), and didn't give definative answers to the "supernatural or not" question until the very end. The story is this: Laura and her family buy the orphanage she grew up in to turn into a home for special needs children. **Spoilers after here** Her and husband's son is adopted and is HIV+. When they move to this new place, their son has two imaginary friends, but he quickly gains six more. At the welcome party for the new home, the son disappears. Laura blames his imaginary friends. Big surprise - the people around her start to think she might be a bit crazy.

Here's what is bothering me: The wrap-up, "happy" ending, is Laura committing suicide. She gets what she wants, to be with her son again. Now, I know why, in the context of the movie and everything that is revealed, this makes a sort of sense and leads to what is probably the happiest ending possible for everyone involved (except Laura's now-widower husband), but I still feel uneasy about the ending of a movie that leaves suicide as the best option. For those who know me, it should be obvious why I feel this way. Of course, this has nothing to do with the merits of the film as a film, but it still effects how I view the movie.

But, for the most part, good, suspenseful, not overly gory, subtitled horror film.

Walk Hard

2010-07-22T04:11:00.003-05:00

Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Directed by Jake Kasden

Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasden

Cast Includes
John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox
Jenna Fischer as Darlene, Dewey's second wife and soulmate
Tim Meadows as Sam, the drummer, who always ends up paying for the drugs
Kristen Wiig as Edith, Dewey's first wife
and a crap ton of cameos of different actors playing different famous rock figures

The movie is a mockumentary, following the life of Dewey Cox, a rock singer/guitarist, from his start in the 1950s to his redemptive re-discovery in the 2000s, with all the trappings of rock stardom along the way: multiple wives, children, legal battles, drugs, the evolution of his music, and interacting with other actual rock stars. If you've seen Ray and/or Walk the Line, you know the territory. With a few quick exceptions (That's Amore), all the songs on the soundtrack are originals, hilarious but fitting for the eras they represent.

Even though this movie can go a bit overboard at times, I really enjoyed it, laughed quite a bit. You know, I actually think it's probably my favorite Apatow movie so far. Usually, my biggest problem with Apatow movies is the schlubby male protagonist who I never believe could pull in the hottie he ends up with and their relationship is usually the main focus of the movie. In this movie, while I know it's an obvious, over the top parody of rock biopics, hell of the life-arc of rock musicians in general, I believe that Dewey can and does do these things because I've seen the other biopics, know that other musicians' lives did follow this path. Though, on the other hand, because it is such an in-your-face parody, I don't need to believe that this could happen, know that it can't happen, that it's just an exageration of real life. It worked for me, especially when many of the "parody" movies lately have been so mind-numbingly stupid, just throwing together bits from all the latest popular movies and real-life celebrity scandals in the loosest possible story. I definately recommend this, especially for people who know the evolution of early rock'n'roll and don't mind it lampooned a bit.

District 9

2010-07-18T21:15:00.002-05:00

District 9 (2009)

Directed by Neill Blomkamp

Cast includes
Sharlto Copley as Wikus van der Merwe
lots of cgi aliens

I just watched this movie earlier today on DVD. When it first came out last year, I really wanted to see it, thought it sounded very unusual. But I think that this was definitely a case for me where ignorance might have been bliss, as I've read so many commentaries and blog posts, especially questioning whether the racial allegory was really as redeeming as it might seem on the surface, that it ruined the cool, new factor of it all. Then again, I also made the mistake of watching it with my folks and my step-dad was kinda a spoil-sport. Boo. Just Mom is a much better movie companion.

Alright, so for those of you who don't know about the movie, here's the plot. An alien ship comes to Earth in 2001 and hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa. After three months of nothing happening, the government busts into the ship, finds severely malnourished aliens, who they shepard into a holding area, which quickly becomes fenced in, militarized, and then slums called District 9. For years, there is a sort of stasis, with the aliens living in their district, scrounging for trash and cat food, but never really doing anything to leave. While most of the humans consider the aliens the lowest of the low, no one in the government or the company in charge of relating to the aliens (which is primarily a weapons manufacturer who want to take advantage of alien technology) seems to know how to get them to go back home. Hell, no one seems to even be trying to learn the alien language, though the aliens seem to understand ours. Things come to a head when it is decided that the aliens must be moved out of their current slums into a specially built refugee camp hundreds of miles outside of the city. While serving the evictions, a dweeby bureaucrat becomes "infected" and starts to turn into an alien. He teams up with an alien trying to put a ship back together to go home to solve both their problems.

I think that, in the beginning, what made this movie different was that it falls into the category of oppressed alien movies, which is a smaller category than the scary aliens who come to Earth to take over and kill or enslave humans category of science fiction movies. Now, originally, I was going to add the word "sympathetic" to "oppressed aliens," but I think this is another place where the movie tries to do something it thinks is great, but it misses the mark for some people. The movie presents the aliens as more of a worker bee class, who resort to base instincts when they don't have a command presence, so they steal (not that they have an opportunity for legitimate work), fight, and scavenge. This behavior makes it difficult for many to root for these aliens to live in free society. This is often used as the excuse to segregate and hold back those of other classes and races, "Look what they do in their own neighborhoods? Look at how many of them are criminals?" without taking into consideration the lack of legitimate opportunites. Especially coming from and setting the film in South Africa, I'm sure that the writers and director were acutely aware of this. But sadly, the film never really changes that view of the aliens. The alien who helps Wikus, named by the government Christopher Johnson, only works to be the exception that proves the rule, the smart black or poor man who makes good and gets out. In the end, the aliens are still just rabid, destructive animals that must be herded together, far away from humanity. (And, yes, there is a name that the humans call the aliens, one that the movie even calls a derogatory term, though all the characters use that term thereafter. As I see that word, in the coontext of the movie, as the same as other words used to refer to other minority groups, I will not use it to refer to them any more than I would use the n-word.)

I think the bigger theme, one all too common in scifi movies these days, is how much bullshit everyone will accept from the government, large corporations, and the mainstream press, so that it is easier for them to go on with their everyday life. But that's not really anything new.

Oh, but I did really like the aliens. The farther we get away from humoid aliens in movies, the happier I am. I recently read an article that said scientists have found higher levels of methane loss than there should be on Mars and one of their hypostesis is that there may be methane based lifeforms on the planet. (FYI: Lifeforms on our planet are carbon based.) Reading that made me wonder how methane based lifeforms might look different from us and what other elements could be the basis for lifeforms. Hmmmmm.......

So I'm not sure whether or not I recommend it. If you've read this, you can decide for yourself. Just don't blame me either way.

Inception

2010-07-18T21:05:00.001-05:00

Inception (2010)

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan

Cast Includes
Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb
Ellen Page as Ariadne (perhaps after her)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur
Tom Hardy as Eames
Ken Watanabe as Saito

I'll try to avoid major spoilers, but, as the commercials have been pretty big on visuals but light on plot, I'm not sure I can avoid not giving anything away.

As for plot, I think Tim, the movie blogger behind Antagony & Ecstasy, really gets it perfect: "Here's the story: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a master thief with a shady past, given an opportunity by mysterious businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) to redeem everything he's ever done, and in the process reunite with the children he left in the U.S. when he was forced for shady reasons to flee the country. Saito's offer includes completing an impossible mission, for which Cobb must assemble the best team ever compiled for such a mission. Everything else is just details." Ultimately, at it's heart, this is a heist film and a con film. It being set in a world of dreams and dreams within dreams adds amazing visuals and the undercurrents of what is really real versus what is just a dream, but that is all just icing on the cake for me.

Hmmmm, I guess I don't have a great deal more to say about it than that. I think I need another viewing. I was impressed visually. I thought the action was good. But....I'm still left kinda deflated. Maybe it was the movie since then, which i'll get to in the next post. I think I just need to watch it again..... I think if you saw Dark Knight and weren't disappointed by it after the hype, you'll probably be good to see this movie and I'm not really sure that the large visual pieces will translate as well to your tv, so you might want to catch it while it's on the big screen, even if it's at a cheaper twilight show.

Winter's Bone

2010-07-18T20:14:00.000-05:00

Winter's Bone (2010)

Directed and co-written by Debra Granik

Cast Includes
Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly
John Hawkes as Teardrop
Kevin Braznahan as Little Arthur
Garrett Dillahunt as Sheriff Baskin

Saw at twilight showing at local art house theater July 14th, 2010, along with a dozen other people, mostly senior citizens

I thought this was a great, low-budget mystery movie, with something very real at stake. The movie is set in The Missouri Ozarks, not the partying by the lake area of the Ozarks, but the backwoods area that most people think are backwards, where many people live on and off of the land and woods. Especially when the small towns can't offer enough employment and those who live off of the land and the woods can barely eek out a living, these rural areas become havens for all kinds of illegal trade and creation. During prohibition, this meant moonshine. Nowadays, it means meth. Seventeen year old Ree lives with her nearly catatonic mother and a younger brother and sister in a small cabin surrounded by what her uncle calls "hundred year old woods." She has quit high school to take care of them, though she obviously values their education, quizzes them as she walks them to school. She dreams of going into the army, not to get away from her family, but to use the sign on bonus to care for them and to take them out of the Ozarks with her. She's a fairly straight arrow in a bad situation which soon gets worse. The local sheriff lets her know that her father is due in court the next week, but no one can find him, which is now Ree's problem since her father put up their house for his bail. Now this tough girl must find and confront her father's known associates, many of whom she's related to, in at least a distant way, and all of whom are involved in shady illegal activities that may come to light if Ree finds her father. All the while, Ree also tries to figure out what she'll do if, when, she loses the house and her family has no place to live. I thought this was a very good movie, harrowing in a everyday, down-to-earth way, just a young poor woman, struggling on the edge of homelessness, pushing against other people who were once in a situation like hers and chose illegal means to make a living.

Not that it's difficult for me to find something in a movie to relate to, but this movie did make me wonder how close my life might have been to this movie if just a few decisions were made differently. Now there were four people, two hetro couples it appeared, sitting in front of me, who "oh my" and "ugh"-d during scenes of backwoods life, like Ree showing her brother and sister how to skin a squirrel, so they could eat if something happened to her, or she wasn't around. I got he distinct feeling that these four sixty-something suburbanites felt they were above eating any such thing. Now I have eaten squirrel and I'm pretty sure it was killed by a family member. I've also eaten rabbit and quite alot of deer. After a bit of being a brat as a kid, I've gotten over not eating something because I thought I was too good for it. This would go double if I was in Ree's situation. Which is a situation that is pretty close to situaitons that some of my relatives have probably had. Much of my maternal grandfather's family still live in and around a small town in Southeastern Missouri where my grandfather's parents built their house. But none of these relatives have log cabins and large plots of land. Those who do have their own property live in a trailer on a small plot of land. I remember going to a funeral for one of my grandfather's brothers several years ago, before my grandfather passed. Afterwards, we went to my grandfather's sister's house, a trailer which could have been pretty nice if it didn't have too many people with too many clothes and school books scattered everywhere. My great aunt was taking care of four or five (or more maybe) of her grandchildren because their parents couldn't due to alcohol or drug addictions. Now what would happen to those kids if, when, my great aunt dies? Last I had heard, from my grandma, before she passed, my great aunt was taking care of even younger children, a baby or an infant that her youngest daughter had given birth to while she was clean from cocaine, before she got hooked on meth, the meth that my great aunt said was ravaging the area faster and more thoroughly than alcohol or any other drug had before. Watching this movie, especially watching one character who's face reminded me so much of my own grandfather, hollow, grisled, with that beak-nose, I wondered how my life might have been different if my grandparents had moved back to that small town after he got out of the army, if my grandfather had made it a regular habit to drink as much as his brothers, if, if, if. But a different decision here or there can change so much. Things might not always look so great right now, but I know that I am fortunate in so many ways, fortunate that my life isn't tougher, isn't closer to that edge. I just gotta try to be thankful for that more often.

Gasland

2010-07-16T14:49:00.003-05:00

Gasland (2010)
Documentary by Josh Fox
Watched on July 4, 2010 at home on HBO OnDemand

(post written longhand on July 12, 2010, while on vaca and away from my computer)

I've put off writing about this because I thought time would bring clarity but it has really done the opposite. I'm more ambivalent than ever.

Gasland is a documentary by Josh Fox, following his fourney to understand how hydraulic fracture natural gas drilling has effected the lives of people who lease their land to be used to frilling, as Fox himself is asked to do in the beginning of the film by a natural gas company hoping to frack for gas in Pennsylvania near the Delaware river. With the aid of colorful but simple graphics, he gives an overview of the hydralic fracturing processes and the largely unregulated and not completely retrieved chemicals used. The audience is also treated to footage of Fox's efforts to contact first well-known figures in major natural gas drilling companies in the US, then just someone, anyone who will talk to him, but he never really gets anywhere. Instead, he relies on local reporting, both in print and on television, in locales where drilling has been going on for years to guide him to locals who might talk to him. The audience follows Fox as he meets and gets to know families who's natural gas contaminated well-water can be lit on fire as it comes out of the tap, who have physical illnesses (usually either neurological problems from water toxicity or respiratory problems from chemicals that have evaporated into the air), who's water wells have exploded. These average, working-class folks, hardly people who are anti-corporations or anti-oil and gas (at least before these things), cheerfully show Fox their homes, land, and animals, most relating their stories with a mix of "if you didn't laugh, you'd have to cry" attitude and a sense of disbelief that no one, not the government or the companies, either will or can help them. They also allow Fox to take water samples from their wells. Fox also attends a NY state congressional committee meeting on opening up more land in NY state for drilling in which the men from the natural gas companies testify again and again that it has never been proven that their drilling processes harm the groundwater or the people, animals, and plants around the drilling sites. If I remember right, there were four representatives from the natural gas companies and only one environmental scientist, who was largely ignored when he disagreed with those in the oil company reps. He also talks to the head of the department of environmental protection in PA who steps around much of Fox's questions but does admit that compromises must be made so that people get the energy they want while we try to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Also, while he won't say that the wells people claim are contaminated are actually contaminated, the bueracrat won't drink any of the water from any of the wells that Josh Fox as collected during his travels. In the end, Fox has no real hard answers, though the knowledge that he gains leads him to decide against leasing his lands for any future drilling, no matter how much money they offer him.

By the end of this movie, I was overwhelmingly sad. Not mad, which is what I would have been in previous years, as I'm sure the filmmaker might have anticipated, a sense of righteous indignation that might drive the audience to push politicians and bueracrats to tighten and enforce regulations and to pull back our energy use. Nope, just really sad. And completely helpless. How can I actually change any of this? I don't live in a drilling area. I doubt I could convince my parents to switch from natural gas to another energy source, not that it would help as electricity here is made from burning dirty coal. I have no say in PA or NY where the current debate on to frack or not to frack is happening. Sure, I can vote on representation in and from my state but is there any chance that anyone who is pro-regulation and strong oversight really win in a conservative area in a conservative state, especially given the current pro-corporate stance of the Republican party? If that person did win, would they be able to get any laws through? The same, and then some, goes for the president.

I recently read an op-ed article in the NYT in which the writer suggested that we should think less about whether we want kids but more about if the world needs more kids, that it would be nice for individuals to forstall a kid or two to help not contribute to worldwide overuse of resources and to overpopulation. The writer specifically stated that he didn't want a mandatory government program of any kind, just a voluntary thoughtfulness. Now, I'm pretty sure I do not want any children, for a variety of reasons, but, though I've usually kept this to myself, I've also questioned the wisdom of growing the world's population, especially as we worry about how our way of life harms the planet and the population. So I'm on board with the guy who wrote the op-ed. But after watching this movie, feeling so sad and helpless, I wondered if just not having kids wasn't enough? How about a mass die off? Sometimes this happens to animals accidentally - their population grows too fast for the area they live in to sustain them, their waste pollutes their water supply leading to illnesses, etc. The black plague is often credited with thinning the human population in Europe, but large wars also help humans thin our own herd.

Ok, ok, so I know that by now you are saying, "A mass die off is too extreme. It could lead to genocide, since the majority would pick a disliked minority group to do most of the dying, or people with the 'worst' lives, whether through discrimiation or socioeconomic situations, would volunteer, creating a defacto genocidal situation. Plus, we are working as hard as we can on new energy sources and we can always cut down on our use. And it's not like you're the epitome of environmentally friendly." And I'm not. But I guess I have a harder time staying motivated for these things when I see larger forces working against it. There are people working on 'green' technological advances, but those companies in Gasland, and other large corporations, who make their huge profits on non-green, dirty energy sources, have more money, more lobbying power, more clout with politicians on both sides who have recieved large campaign contributions from them, and can quickly buy off the little guys who are hurt. They have a vested interest in keeping the energy status quo and blocking green energy and I feel helpless in the face of that. There was a day when I would have found this documentary a call to arms. Now I feel that I can't help the situation in a big picture way and I continue, in my own little way, to make it all worse, just by my everyday living.

A friend recently told me that, to her, in many instances, ignorance is bliss and that's why she doesn't watch the news. She doesn't worry about going into a neighborhood that others have told her are "bad" because she doesn't want some crime stat, or someone's opinion of what a bad neighborhood is, to get in the way of her living her life. Somedays, I do wish I could be more like that.

Gasland's movie site

Bug, the movie

2010-06-30T23:57:00.005-05:00

****Spoilers Ahead******

Bug (2006)

Directed by William Friedkin

Cast includes
Ashley Judd as Agnes White
Michael Shannon as Peter Evans
Harry Connick, Jr, as Jerry Goss

You know sometimes you'll see something with bugs crawling on a tv show or you get surprised by a spider or bug or rodent in your house and then you feel like something is crawling on you the rest of the night?

You know how sometimes you'll read an article or a book or hear a talk show about the Bilderberger Group or Obama's FEMA camps and then you start to obsess on these big conspiracies that you could probably do nothing about, even if they were true? Well, unless you are Jesse Ventura and some cable network gives you a show so you can go harass those people and places at the heart of the conspiracies.

Basically, this movie is both of those, wrapped up in a big folie a deux (madness shared by two.) It is a tense brutal movie that takes place almost entirely in a small, slightly grimy motel room in Oklahoma. When Agnes' only friend brings the quiet but seemingly nice Peter over before a party, he and Agnes start their brief but intense, co-dependent relationship. In an extra on the DVD, actor Michael Shannon, who plays Peter, says that he thinks this is really a love story, though a love story between two very damaged people. I would agree with that, but have to add the caveat that it isn't the uplifting, make your life all better kind of love we usually think of. It's the kind of all-consuming, irrational, dangerous love which often leads both people on a downward spiral fueled by their own neurosis, false beliefs, and weaknesses.

I keep thinking of the true crime story about a 'vampire clan' led by Rod Ferrell. I'm not sure that they all really believed they were vampires, the Dracula or Lestat or Jean-Claude variety who must drink human blood to survive and can't go out in the daylight, but there was a kind of group-mind that happened, just like in any other cult, where a part of you knows that what's going on is wrong or too far, but you are so far in that you don't know how to get out.

Obviously, this movie is also about paranoia. It never really answers what exactly propels Peter's delusions and it even leaves some doubt that they are suffering from a delusion. But, as with all mental illness, there are really only a matter of degrees between real life conspiracies, what we view as typical paranoid conspiracy theories, and the ravings of delusional people. Are there parasites in our bodies? Well, there can be. There's even a show on cable, on Nat Geo, I think, about people getting parasites. Has the US government done testing without consent on people? Sadly, yes. Does our government spy on us? Yeah, it's called Echelon and if a person says certain keywords in their phone conversations, it is flagged so a human agent can listen to it. So when this is the truth, who's to say this guy is so crazy? What is more interesting is why how a grown world-weary woman could so easily start to share this same delusion.

I would definately recommend this movie, as long as you don't mind the seeing the scratches and gouging and..., well, that spoils too much, that come when you think you have bugs under your skin.

The Twilight Saga (So Far)

2010-06-30T06:08:00.004-05:00

***Spoilers ahead***

Ok, so before I actually start writing about seeing the three movies in The Twilight Saga (so far), I feel like I should add two things about movies and how I view them.

The first is the Bechdel Test. This comes from an episode in a comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. In it, one of the characters says that she only goes to movies that have 1) two named female characters who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. (Website with list of movies and icons to identify how they fair on Bechdel Test.) Now, don't get me wrong. Movies that pass this test aren't feminist or feminist-friendly, but I find it hard to believe that a movie that doesn't pass this test could be feminist or feminist-friendly. When you start to think about this test, you might start to realize how many movies with big female heroes (think Alien/s or Terminator 2) never have two named female characters talk to each other. Also, I would love to find a comparable test for non-racist or non-homophobic or non-hetrocentrist movies. Maybe that a mainstream movie has to have two named minority characters in which they talk to each other but not about a white character? I'll have to think on that. But I'm using this to draw a larger point. I try to look at movies (and books and tv shows and all other types of media) as both entertainment and as a part of the larger society's discourse.

Which leads me to the second thing I wanted to write about my movie viewing habits. What I wrote in the last paragraph about how I view these things - yeah, that IS how I enjoy them. Please don't read what I might say about a movie (or other piece of media/work of art) and tell me/write to me that I should "Just sit back and enjoy it," implying that I shouldn't analyze it or think about it, because that to me is a contradiction. I am trying more and more to accept the contradictions in the things I like, that a really funny comedy seems to be kinda racist or that I like Chinatown even though I think Roman Polanski should immediately go to a US prison to serve a term for rape, but I have to first acknowledge the problem aspects as well as the better aspects before I can come to terms with the contradictions. Now, when I tell my parents about a movie and include any of those bits, my step-dad always asks me why I can't just enjoy a movie for once. I could never really find a good answer for that, until I read a blog post, which I sadly can't find now for the life of me though it was either on a feminist blog or a blog that deals with race & pop culture, in which the author explained just what I wrote above in such a simple straightforward way that I felt stupid for not having thought of it earlier. I guess this is my way of saying that if you don't like looking at movies this way, which is perfectly fine, you might not like my opinions on movies.

So with that out of the way....

The Twilight Saga (so far): Twilight (2008), New Moon (2009), Eclipse (2010)

Directors (respectively): Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Weitz , David Slade

Cast:
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan
Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black
Billy Burke as Sheriff Charlie Swan
Anne Kendrick as Jessica
Nikki Reed as Rosalee Cullen
Alice Greene as Alice Cullen
Jackson Rathbone as Jasper Cullen
Elizabeth Reaser as Esmee Cullen
Rachelle Lefevre/Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria
Peter Facinelli as Dr. Carlyle Cullen
(ok, that was a pain, you get the picture)

So last night I went to see the first three movies in the Twilight saga, in a row, in a proper theater. I had seen the first movie previously, with a friend, on DVD, on a less than theater-sized screen and had read the first book before that. I wasn't too impressed with either. But I still felt like I should bear witness to this pop culture phenomenon, especially when it was less than $5 a movie, all on a big screen. There are some good things to the movies, but I'll let others talk about those things. The biggest thing that I took away from these movies is that this series seems to be a primer in creating a dependent, sad-sack young woman who accepts (and participates in) emotional manipulation and is attracted to aggressive, possessive passive-aggressive men. To me, many of the things that happen within these relationships seem to spell out the possibility of an abusive future relationship.

In this vein, there are two events in the movies that really stuck out to me. The first is in New Moon and is pure, but very disturbing emotional manipuation on Bella's part. ***Spoilers Ahead*** After Edward abandons her, after exacting a promise from her that she won't do "anything reckless," Bella proceeds to do reckless things, once she figures out that Edward will appear to her when she does them, in an attempt to stop them. Her last act of recklessness is cliff diving, fully clothed, into freezing cold water, which leads to her near drowning and her would-be killer almost getting ahold of her. Now, maybe you haven't heard this one before, but to me it sounds like, "If you don't come back, I'll kill myself. See, I've got the razor blade out. I'm serious. Come stop me." But not only does Edward not come back but he also doesn't contact anyone to tell them that Bella needs serious help. He also doesn't seem to see that, by appearing to her every time she does something reckless, he is only rewarding her bad behavior, thus driving her to more and worse behavior so that he will pay attention to her again. Take it from someone who's been there: This is not healthy!

While the second event comes from a particular scene between Bella and Jacob, I think that this speaks to the possessive, aggressive nature of the men Bella won't just leave alone. In Eclipse, after Bella breaks the news to Jacob that she is planning on being turned into a vampire just after graduation, Jacob throws a wrench and tells her, "Better you be dead than one of them." I should acknowledge that, as a teenager, I dated a guy who liked to punch walls and trash bins that were near me when he was mad, as opposed to hitting me. Humans can make horribly bad relationship decisions, especially when they are teenagers. Why should I expect Bella and Jacob to be different? I guess I don't expect the teen heartthrob of the moment ("Team Jacob! Woooooo!") to seem like he's on the verge of becoming an abuser while still having our female protagonist want to be with him. (In New Moon, Jacob explains his trepidation in dating a human by telling Bella how his pack leader's fiancee got so injured: the leader got upset, lost his temper for just a moment, and she was too close. While Jacob does say that the pack leader feels horrible and guilty, no one seems to equate this with physical domestic abuse.) This physical violence is reciprocated in the next scene when, after Jacob kisses Bella without her consent, Bella punches him in the face, which, as he's a big buff werewolve, results in Bella getting the injury, a sprained hand. But still Bella kinda sorta pursues something with Jacob, while still committing to Edward, who starts to back down and loosen up on his possessiveness. In the end, when Bella decides to be with Edward, not Jacob, it isn't because of the actions of their men. It is simply because she loves Edward more than Jacob. Now, in real life, I would probably just throw up my hands and let humans be humans. But hundreds of people have worked hard to create these stories, many of them agonizing over these decisions. And I bet not one of them would want their daughter to consider a guy who said he'd rather she be dead than a part of another group. To them, I'm sure that disqualifies that guy for the affection of their daughter. So why are they selling this crap to our daughters?

Now, especially when we are talking about children's or young adult literature, I assume that there are 'lessons' that can be learned from the text. While I read a recent quote from (adult? regular? literature) writer Ian McEwan, "Psychological realism demands that sometimes the wicked prosper," I do not think that the same sentiment prevails in...well, most forms of entertainment, to be honest, but especially in literature pointed towards non-adult readers. Think about all the 'lessons' in Harry Potter books (acceptance of and promoting the welfare of minorities 'Mudbloods' and house elves) and all the positive character traits Harry either already possesses or that he develops as the story moves along. While I think there are supposed to be some morality imparted in the Twilight movies, our protagonist only seems to demonstrate any of these through self-sacrifice, never through actual achievement. Other characters also do things that might get them killed or harmed, but they do it through fighting as opposed to giving up, running away, hiding out, or delivering themselves to their enemy. Midway through the second movie in our triple feature, I realized the real reason why I prefer my smutty supernatural books, like the Anita Blake series, to the Twilight series, and it's not the sex, which is what I was citing as my reason. It is that Anita Blake started out as a badass woman with her own skills and talents, whereas Bella seems to possess none of those things. Yes, I know, the reason Bella is beloved by readers is because she's just like them, average, with some flaws, thrown into a crazy world she doesn't fit into as she falls into love. But if you want to think that you are just like her, so you could be her, well.... don't you want to be able to think of yourself as having something special and unusual about you? Throughout the Blake books, Anita grows in power and self-knowledge, though even in the first book I think many women could relate to a young woman who is up and coming in her career, but sometimes finds it a cold and alienating boy's club. I think that in the start of the books, she's only in her early 20s. I've also read the first two books in the LA Banks' Vampire Huntress Legends, about Damali, a spoken word artist and kickass vampire and demon hunting teenage woman, coming into her own, both in terms of power and sexuality. While both these series are popular, they are obviously not as popular as the Twilight series, obviously not popular enough to get their own movies. But I would argue that these are much better female role models than Bella.

Sigh. Alright, so I'm tired. If this was a formal, classroom /published essay, I'd come up with some bullshit at the end. But this is it. These are my theories about these movies. As for moviegoers who don't want to think about this stuff, well, they get better as they go along, though the pale vamp makeup still looks stupid. (How can they make the werewolves look so good in CGI but their makeup looks so bad? Ugh.) The second and the third movie have decent romance elements and the third movie has some pretty great fight scenes. There is no horror or scare value, despite the vampires and werewolves, but at least there is some (intentional) comedy in the third movie.

PS Among the things I didn't get to are the disappearing minorities in the movie, as the series starts out with quite a diverse cast both in the town and in Bella's high school, but these elements are quickly stripped away to leave the almost all white cast of vampires and Indian werewolves, most not played by Native American actors. And I think that all the color, other than Indian werewolves, in the second and third movies are vamps of color who are quickly killed off. I'll let you think on that.

Movie Catch-up

2010-06-25T04:15:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I know I promised to blog about every movie (new to me movie) I watched and I've been kinda lax about doing that in a timely manner. So here are my reviews of the movies I've seen recently, though they might be shorter than usual.

Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Saw Saturday 6/19/2010 at local multiplex with my mom
Directed by Nicolas Stoller
Cast includes
Jonah Hill as Aaron Green
Russell Brand as Aldous Snow
Sean "P Diddy" Combs as record label head Sergio Roma
Rose Byrne as Jackie Q
and tons of celebrity cameos

This was a pretty hilarious send up of current pop/rock/celebrity culture, with a very healthy dose of rauch and gross humor. I was skeptical at first that a movie about a minor supporting character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall would work, but, upon further thought, Brand's Aldous Snow was probably the least whangsty introspective, but still funny, part about that movie, so I guess it was a good call to make a summer comedy about him. I do have to say that I think my favorite bits in the movie come from Byrne's Jackie Q, the raunchy popstar ex-wife of Aldous Snow, and the "The Jeffrey"/furry wall drug sequence. I hope that "The Jeffrey" makes its way into our illegal drug lexicon, though I'm not sure it really exists. I definately recommend it if you like other comedies directed or produced by Judd Apatow, though with some less sad-sack guys featured.

Oh, and sidenote: Rose Byrne's British accent was really good. I'd watched her on Damages on FX and just felt "meh" about her, but I found her really funny in this movie. Until I saw it, I guess I just assumed that she was American, but it turns out she's Aussie, so she seems pretty good at those accents to me. Also, in one scene, at Snow's very Brit themed NY apartment, Green wakes up using what looks like a British Union Jack flag as a blanket, which made me wonder if they have real quilts that are made out of soft fabric but look like the Brit flag. If so, I want one.

Black Is...Black Ain't (1994)
Watched on DVD Monday 06/21/2010 at Miss Kee's house
Directed by Marlon Riggs
Documentary including commentary from Riggs himself, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Cornel West

Hmmm so I'm kinda speechless about this movie, unless I'm talking to someone else who has also seen this movie and is interested in the topics it brings up. So the short of it is that it's a really... interesting doesn't quite cover it but I guess it'll do, interesting nontraditional documentary about African-American life, touching on how it intersects with feminism and homosexuality and gender identity. But that doesn't quite seem to cover it. It was produced, directed, and featured Marlon Riggs, a gay African-American poet, filmmaker, and activist, who would die from AIDS before the film could be properly finished. It was sorta amazing to Miss Kee and myself that this was done back in 1994, but many of the issues haven't really changed. I think that to me, the most exilarhating part was getting to see Angela Davis and bell hooks talk about their personal experiences of being young black women. But I think I most liked it because it dealt with these issues in a very upfront, honest, but personal matter.

Lastly....
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Ok, so it wasn't the first time I saw it. I originally went to see it with TyRoy at a local art house theater about a month ago. I'd read the book it is based on, the first in a series of three internationally bestselling Swedish novels, and TyRoy was reading it at the time. Miss Kee called me last week, asking if I'd heard about a movie that she'd been told about by a customer at work. This movie. So we went to see it together. She liked it.

I still liked it, though a second viewing allowed me to wonder about how much is lost on someone like Miss Kee, who hasn't read the books and probably isn't going to. It's a big story to fit in a two and a half hours.

A part of me is always interested in audience reaction when I see a movie in a theater. Or even with friends at home. When TyRoy and I went to see this movie, we were a bit worried for the audience. There are several brightly-lit scenes of sexual violence. We observed many.... um, how to put this nicely.... older people there. Many who looked older than my mom, who's in her early 50s. Now, because there is a good story, I think I might recommend it to my mom, but only with very strong warnings about the sexual violence. TyRoy and I heard some of the people talking about having read the book, so they should have known what they were in for, though I still contend that this movie shows the sexual violence in a more brightly-light, unblinking way than most American movies. But many of those older people talked solely about the rave reviews the movie recieved from the local paper. (Oh, yeah, and obviously we were eavesdropping.) We had read the review and it didn't warn about the violence. We were worried about these folks. But not as many people left as I thought. One woman my age left during one brutal scene, which I didn't blame her for. I'm starting to think that there should be a "Trigger Warning" website, just like many religious people go to movie review websites that tell them how in line (or not in line) a movie may be with their religious and moral beliefs, before they let their kids watch them or even watch them themselves. The second time I saw it, on a weekday afternoon, there were considerably less people there. But during the last major brutal scene of sexual violence, one older man left the theater, via the exit up front, by the screen. Miss Kee and I discussed the possible reasons for his departure after the film ended. She shared my first impression, that he had left solely because this scene involved sexual violence against a man, unlike the others. I thought that we should allow room for the explanation that he had just seen several scenes of sexual violence and thought that rest of the rather long movie would be like that, though it isn't after that scene.

Ok, well, that's it. I'm caught up. Nighty-night.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

2010-06-03T07:44:00.002-05:00

So I wanted to make myself write more, no matter really what it was, so I thought I would start attempting to blog about every film I saw. So that starts here:

Title: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Year: 1962
Genres: Thriller, Horror
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson, Joan Crawford as Blanche Hudson, Victor Buono as Edwin Flagg, Maidie Norman as Elvira Stitt

For those who love horror but are a tad jaded by the current trends of lots of gore and torture porn, this movie will rekindle your love for horror and your admiration for directors who can really create suspense. Yes, I even talked to the screen, I was so invested in what was happening with these characters.

Alright, let's get the plot out of the way. There are a pair of sisters, blonde "Baby" Jane and brunette Blanche. Baby Jane has fame as a vaudeville performer in 1917, but is a mean little brat. Later, in the mid-1930s, as young women, Blanche gains sucess as a film actress, forcing the studio she works for to also hire her sister who is already a washed-up boozer who's day has passed. But then there's a horrible accident that leaves Blanche paralyzed from the waist down and in the care of her sister. There seems to have been a stasis for 20+ years, until Blanche decides they might be better apart.

Of course, what is a great movie without a great backstory, right? Basically, Davis and Crawford hated each other, so much so that there's a whole book about it. Crawford even campaigned against Davis winning the Best Actress Oscar for Baby Jane. But to me, I wonder if either of these actresses found anything striking about playing past their prime stars still deluding themselves, to one extent or another, that they are significant. It's also sad that they have to play down their looks and/or play up how badly they were aging (especially in Bette Davis' case) to play significant roles. Davis' Baby Jane character wants to attempt a comeback, having adult-sized versions of her childhood costumes made, and hiring a piano accompanyist, but the audience can see how grotesque and desperate this performance really is. I wonder if Davis felt like she was in on the joke, or if she was oblivious to the fact that part of how grotesque Baby Jane is to the audience is wrapped up in how ugly Davis is able to make herself. On the other hand, I get a certain pleasure from the knowledge that Joan Crawford, who would later become almost as famous as "Mommie Dearest" as she ever was as an actress, played the role of the tortured and terrified Blanche. There are several scenes that I know couldn't have been comfortable to film. Hehehe. Yes, I'm a mean person. So was she.

I definately recommend this movie for any lover of suspenseful movies. I'd warn contemporary audiences that the pacing of any film from earlier decades will not be what they are used to, but give it some time. If you find yourself bored, examine Baby Jane's face and think about what boozing and smoking and harsh chemicals are doing to your own body, how they will affect how you age. Also, there are some gaping plot holes, but please just suspend your disbelief. It was the 60s and you don't know what it was like back then, whippersnapper. But enjoy.

The subconscious is a bitch

2010-05-19T02:13:00.002-05:00

The house went on the market last weekend. The house that my grandparents built and raised their children in. The house I grew up in, full-time for the first 7 years of my life, then part-time, one weekend a month and holidays, for the rest of my youth. The house I could always call home, no matter what the situation. The house I've begrudgingly helped my family clear out and stage for sale. And, contrary to what we were expecting given the current housing market, there is already an offer on the table. And not flippers, who'll tear apart the house, or people who intend to rent out the house to people who'll leave the house in ruins. Nope, they're a young couple just about to be married.

My mom told me all of this Sunday. And I spent the rest of my time at TyRoy's that day crying. And a good deal of time since then too actually. I knew it'd be hard to do this, but I didn't know how hard. And the closer we got to actually being finished with the house, the harder it got for me. It was like losing my grandparents all over again. As melodramatic as it sounds, it was like I was letting them be killed, inch by inch, cleared out room by moved recliner. Intellectually, I know all the reasons we have to sell the house. It's owned by my mother and her two brothers. No one person has the money to buy the others out of the house. And no one (but me) wants to live there. They all have homes, or at least another town they call home, and don't want to leave them. And everyone could use the money from the sale of the house, especially my youngest uncle, the one who is living with cancer. Yes, intellectually, I know we have to sell it. But my heart just can't let it go.

I remember Sir telling me that life is not what happens TO you; life is just what happens. I keep trying to tell myself that, but I don't really think it is helping. As childist and, once again, melodramatic as this sounds, I feel like things keep getting taken away from me. Things I either really had no hand in building, such as my family and home, or things and people that entered my life when my circustances were different so I'm not sure I could replicate them now. It is easy to say that I can (and probably should) find/build a new home for myself and find new lovers when mine is transferred. But I cannot replace my grandparents or my uncle, who will be taken from me far too soon. And I am lost, confused, and absolutely rudderless when it comes to what to do when I actually can make a life of my own, when this death watch is over. (And yes, that is what it is. I value that he is here and I will love and care for him until he is gone, but I am only being honest, with others and myself, when I say that he will die, sooner than anyone could ever want. I refuse to apologize to people who think I'm cruel but have never watched with certain knowledge that a loved one is going to die. I also refuse to chase false hopes and miracle cures when there are no more left.)

All I want is someone who will listen to me and who I can believe them when they says they understand or that they are sorry. Someone who can show me enough emotion for me to believe that they sympathize with me. I have yet been able to find that, despite the fact that many I care for have diligently tried. Sadly, today I was once again reminded that those I could always count on to have both the emotional capacity and life experience to bring insight or a different point of view to a situation are cut off from me in this situation. Gram, always one to voice her opinion even when it was unsolicited, is no longer here to share and I'm sadly devoid of the supernatural powers I would need to hear her now. My uncle is...well, honestly, what could I say to him about all this? My mother is always there to listen and I know she is aware of what I am feeling to some degree, but I am afraid that she'd pull back all the caretaker responsibility she's entrusted in me, which would mean it would all fall on her. I don't want to be a martyr, but I don't want her to be one either. I believe the burden should be shared, as best we can manage, even if it tears us both apart.

Last night I had this dream. Now, most of my dreams are fantastical, rarely touching on real life situations, though things I have seen or thought about during the past day or days do pop up. Just my brain transfering memory around. But last night's dream mirrored what had been happening with the house during the preparation phase: Mom was trying to keep everyone on task, though that is easier said than done. My uncle was hindering progress, "Well we can't do A because of X. We can't empty the garage because it's too cold today. Etc." My step-dad was supposed to be fixing things but he was really just making a big mess. And my gram and I were mostly just crying. (Oddly, in dreams, my gram is usually still alive while my grandfather either appears as a ghost or I know he's dead despite the fact that he's physically solid. My mom suggested that it was because I was there when my grandfather died so his death is more real to me.) Back to inside the dream, where my mother and I ran an errand to go pick up some things from the local lumber yard, which was owned and run by Dr. Phil (who knows). I was thinking about how I should send out a tweet/facebook status update, but all I wanted to write was, "This is all your fault. I will never forgive you. I will hate you until the day you die," which in my mind was directed at my uncle. That's about the time I woke up. And when I was slapped in the face by that evil little reality. That despite how much I might love my family and want to help as much as I can in all this, I'm also bitter and frustrated and hateful. I detest that it is so, but it is. And I have no more idea what to do about it than I do anything else.

On a brighter note, my mom also had a dream. She dreamt that I had become a famous and wealthy writer of cheesy romance novels. Of course, I wrote under a pen name, something equally cheesy, like Sweetpea Smith, and none of my friends believed me when I told them that it was really me who was that famous and wealthy writer. (Mom must have seen Lethal Weapon 4 recently. Wasn't it 4 where the one cop's wife was actually a romance writer and that's how they could afford all their stuff?) But every year I sent a Christmas card to my grandparents' former house, telling them that if they ever wanted to sell the place, I'd pay handsomely. Finally, one year, they bit. Then, I started buying up all the houses around my grandparents' house, demolishing them all and building a big mansion on the hill. And you had to take Sweetpea Lane to get there (or whatever my pen name was.) Mom didn't say whether or not I left my grandparents' house standing or not. I bet I did, though. Well, a girl can dream, right? Guess I should get to writing those romance novels.

House That Built Me - Miranda Lambert

2010-04-22T19:25:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I know this is a country one, but there's something on youtube about it also having been recorded by pop chick Kelly Clarkson, so suck it up. It's a beautiful song and one that I think many of us can relate to.

I first heard this song on the first trip I made to help get my Grandma's house ready for sale. Of course, it made me bawl my eyes out and it still does. From the time my gram died, I didn't want to give up the house. Still don't, but now I see why it's necessary and I'll tow the party line on this one. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt to think about other people living in that house or to know that soon I'll never be able to go back to that "home" again. And, despite that fact that I've lived many places, none but my grandparents' house was ever really home to me. Hell, it was even where I retreated to after the home invasion and attempted burglary of the first place I lived "on my own." It was the one place I knew I"d feel safe at a time when I couldn't bear to close my eyes to sleep after dark.

So here's the song. I hope it makes you into a blubbering idiot just like it does me. :P

House that Built Me

(skip to about 1:20 on the video to get to song)

I know they say you cant go home again.
I just had to come back one last time.
Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam.
But these handprints on the front steps are mine.
And up those stairs, in that little back bedroom
is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.
And I bet you didn't know under that live oak
my favorite dog is buried in the yard.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From "Better Homes and Garden" magazines.
Plans were drawn, concrete poured,
and nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama's dream.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

Sacrifing at the Altar of Mental Health

2010-04-19T02:45:00.002-05:00

Possibly TMI (too much information) about personal sexual matters. Read with caution.

This probably won't be your typical post, with a real point to it. Mostly just venting because I don't know what else to do. I fear that if I don't DO something, I'll just curl up in a ball and shut down. I don't want to shut down. But I don't really know what to do to help. And there really isn't an immediate crisis that needs tending to, more an internal personal crisis. So just bear with me as I vent. If you have constructive criticism or helpful advice, feel free to give it to me. If not, no worries, thanks for at least bearing witness to my cry to heaven.

I had a fiction teacher who told us that melodrama ended in a perfect bind where someone had to die for it to be resolved, where all the choices left to the protagonist were horrible ones, usually being suicide or murder. I guess I'm being overly melodramatic by comparing that to my situation, but I do feel like I'm in a double bind.

The lithium has saved my life and put me on an even keel. I cannot imagine going of this medication because I honestly don't want to return to being so imbalanced, to having to constantly right against manic suicidality, or the lovely hospital stays. BUT it has changed my personality and habits in ways that I do not like and can't see myself living with long-term. This is especially true in the case of my sex drive, sexual interests, and sexual response. So in addition to my ability to think quickly and in depth, which I've talked about before, I'm also sacrificing my sex life on the altar of 'mental health.'

My psychiatrist asked me to think of these changes in my mood, behavior, thought process, etc, as bringing me closer to normal, as showing me how un-normal my thinking was previously, before the lithium, so I might appreciate this new way of thinking. Sigh. That was before all the sex stuff really kicked me in the teeth. Without going into too much detail about the circumstances, TyRoy and I decided to indulge in some even-less-mainstream sexual adventures. Part of it was that we just never really took advantage of having each other this time, of having a crazy freaky sex partner who would be up for sexual adventures with other people and TyRoy will be transfered by his job in the next 6 months. For me, there was another part- I just hadn't been as interested in sex since I had started taking the lithium. I wasn't looking for outside sex partners, like on Craigslist or other personal's sites. I haven't been having solo flights, despite a pretty new 'jackrabbit'-type vibe. While TyRoy had known for about a year that I hadn't been as horny, I don't think he really realized the fully extent of the change in me, mostly because I don't often turn him down and I thoroughly enjoy it when we do have sex. Honestly, I think I was trying to deny the whole situation. But the adventure we sought out this past weekend meant I had to face it. Or...well, face it only to run away like a giant coward, while my issues chased after me, refusing to be ignored.

I don't like this person that I feel I've become now. I don't like this woman. When I was much younger, I recognized that I might not be the unattainable heartbreaking lady who existed in so many pop songs, but I could at least be that lover who pulled you into bed with passion and fire and a VERY open-mind. I wanted to try almost everything sexual. I've known for a long time that I many kinky interests. After finding Savage Love, I realized that I always wanted to try to be GGG (good, giving, and game) and that I wanted to try to create a continiously loving and sexual relationship with any and every long term partner. But this me doesn't have the same interest in actually having sex. I do think about sex all the time. I like learning about it still. It doesn't turn me off. But actually having sex, even with my hot stud of a not-boyfriend, is more like eating dinner at 6pm when you aren't exactly hungry. You do it because it's that time. It tastes great. And you feel much better after you're done, so you do it. But I don't want sex to be like that. I still want to seek out new sexual experiences. I mean, what is an open-mind about all these sexual things if you can't use it to actually DO something?

I also fear for my next sexual relationship. I don't think the sexual relationship with TyRoy has necessarily suffered but that is because he prefers initiating sex, so it's not as if alot has changed. But not all people are like that. Also, fairly, most men and women want their partner to initiate sex at least part of the time. They don't want to feel like they are always pushing themselves on their partner. They want to feel like their partner also wants them enough to get the action started. Goddess help me if I get with a person who is used to their partner being their aggressor. They'll be waiting forever and we'll never have sex.

Fuck, I just feel like things, possibilities just keep getting taken away from me. I'm in all these no-win situations. I know in my heart I'll almost always make the right decision, do the less selfish thing, but a little part of me doesn't want to. I want to run away. Every time I think about that, think about sharing that sentence with someone else, especially whenever I'd think about texting it to MP, I'd realize how 'teenager' that sounded. But maybe part of me is stuck back there. And I lack all the hallmarks of adulthood - degrees, career, children, ownership. But I do have that restlessness still. There are many times that I just wish I could start over, as if a new place and new life would erase history and mental illness. Well, life is longer than we think. Maybe I'll get to try it out yet.

My mom seems to think the lithium is some kind of miracle in my life. Maybe it is. But I still don't have a job and I still disappear into sleep for 12-48 hours at a time every week or two. I asked TyRoy, point blank, if he prefered how I was before the lithium or how I am now with the lack of sexual adventure. After only a few seconds of thought, he answered that he prefered me now, lacking in sexual adventure, but no longer prone to show up at his house at 10 pm after I'd been threatening suicide all night. I do see his point. But there's always a "BUT..." for me.

Is it wrong that I wonder how it might have been decades, centuries ago, before psychiatric drugs? I guess I'm thinking of the romanticized lives of artists, though, while they may have lived 'romantic' lives, they often lived lives of poverty, just like everyone else of their day who suffered from a mental illness and was unable to work and/or self-medicated with alcohol.

I don't think I've gotten any further in my thinking but at least I did something and now I'm closer to tired. Thanks for listening.

Public Smoking

2010-03-05T00:39:00.003-06:00

There's something luxurious about having a girl light your cigarette. In fact, I got married once on account of that. ~Harold Robbins [true for me, only it was a man who lit my cigarette]

There's a lot of people who, a cigarette is about the only vacation they have. ~Trey Parker, mini-commentary on DVD South Park episode "Butt Out"

I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker.... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table. ~Michelle Pfeiffer

Ah, smoking! How I love it! As in the last quote, I don't particularly like identifying myself as a non-smoker or a former-smoker. It's like saying you are celibate just because you can't find anyone to have sex with you. And, like the author of the first quote, I fell in love with sexy french inhale as much as I did a man. Also, I'm not a fan of smoking bans for restaurants and especially not for bars. It just doesn't seem natural to not be able to smoke when you are drinking in public.

BUT

I'm quickly discovering that not being able to breath sucks ass. Now I've always had what I called a slight case of "exercise-induced" asthma, though that probably wasn't really asthma. It was just that I was overweight and out of shape, so, when I'd physically exert myself, I'd have trouble breathing and my lungs burned. Asthma sounded better than fat and out of shape though.

But I did begin having real problems over this past summer. I continued to cough and wheeze after a particularly difficult to cure case of strep throat, during which I also had issues keeping down my medications. Now, my throat, esophagus, and perhaps even my lungs have some level of damage from years of acid reflux and the vomitting that came along with painful gall stones and gall bladder issues several years ago. When I couldn't get the coughing and wheezing to stop and I had several severe incidents of shortness of breath, I finally went to a doctor. After seeing a general practitioner and then a team of pulmonologists, it was concluded that I had adult-onset asthma. They weren't really sure what caused it and finding out would be even more expensive and wouldn't assist in my treatment, so no further testing was done. The doctor conceded that my weight and acid reflux might be contributing factors, but they weren't the only thing causing my current condition. I now use Symbicort twice daily, though I'm about at the end of my samples and I can't afford the $200 a month that it costs. I also have Abuterol rescue inhalers that I inherited from my grandmother.

OK SO WHY AM I TELLING YA'LL THIS?

I am sharing all this because I wanted to help you, those who know me and hang out with me, why it is important to me to know beforehand if a place we are planning on going allows smoking. The times that I have brought this issue up, I felt like I was dismissed for being worried about it when everyone knows that no place allows smoking anymore, which obviously isn't true as several places our group has gone to in the past several months have allowed smoking. Some townships and areas of the metro still allow smoking in restaurants and bars, though it is often difficult to know where those city lines are drawn and who allows what. But it is important to me to be able to decide for myself if I want to be in that environment and to plan ahead by not being anyone's driver and making sure I have my abuterol. (Yes, I know I should ALWAY have a rescue inhaler, but I don't always like dragging around a purse full of everything I might possibly need.) And finding out only after I've arrived, especially when I either rode with someone or drove someone to the location, makes me feel obligated to stay in a situation in which I'm uncomfortable, which leads to me feeling annoyed, bitchy, and anti-social.

I would also like to point out that all people with a certain illness are not the same in how they experience and deal with that. Just because somebody else in our group might also have asthma and does not seem to be bothered by smoke doesn't mean that my own requests should be dismissed. While not a perfect metaphor, some recoving alcoholics can be in places where liquor is served while other recovering alcoholics could not handle the temptation or the environment. Either way, one would hope that their friends would not be dismissive of any requests they made so that they could take responsibility for their own health.

I don't want to make this into a "this person did or didn't do this" and I know that I didn't mention this to all of you. I wrote this because I obviously wasn't clear enough in what I was hoping for when I did mention it to the people I did so I thought I'd attempt to explain why and be clear to everyone. So I would ask anyone who plans an outing to find out if a place allows smoking and to let everyone know, especially me. If you are uncertain, especially if a place is in Shawnee, Merriam, or North Kansas City (the places that I think might all still allow smoking), call and ask. Thank you. Once again, I have no problem with smoking, smokers, or smoking in public places. I am also not asking for anyone else not to go or for events not to be planned at places where there is smoking. I just know that I'd appreciate a heads up so that I can make that decision for myself, and I"m sure there are others who would to.

Temporarily Abled

2010-02-10T22:18:00.002-06:00

I'd like to start out by saying that I do feel kinda silly writing this. I worry that I always sound like I'm complaining or whining, that my life and what I am able to do does not look the same from the outside, which means I shouldn't vent this stuff, that I don't have permission from... society? to express this. But lately I've been reading more and more about people living with disability, especially hidden disabilities, from the people themselves, most notably on Feministe and Three Rivers Fog. Not only has it raised my consciousness in dealing with and looking at those who do and do not fit our stereotypes of atypical ability and atypical neurological states, but it has also allowed me to contemplate the ways that I might not currently be as abled as I might be expected to be. I hope that makes sense. I'd don't know all the right terms, but I think it makes sense.

For a while now, I've recognized that I spend large chunks of my life planning for when my life will really begin. While I've been thinking lately about one small segment of my life in particular, that of working a paying job, I seem to be bumping into some of the same issues. First, I had to get my meds straightened out. Then, it was just hard to find a job. Next, Gram passed and I stayed in Slightly Larger Midwest City to help my uncle who was undergoing a treatment there. Now, as my uncle gets chemo in his hometown, I'm commuting the four-hour roundtrip to help him when he gets chemo and playing homemaker when I'm home. Though I might have heard it before and just tuned out, I was told last week that my uncle will likely be on chemo either for the rest of his life or until his body can't handle it anymore, so I'm not thinking that this commute will end anytime soon.

But when I honestly reflect on my last ten years of employment history, ok so all of my employment history, I haven't really been able to commit to anything for a long period of time. The best I've been able to eek out were two one-year stints at part-time jobs. There are various reasons behind this, though a great many of the times I quit jobs had to do with symptoms of my issues with depression and/or bipolar disorder. The biggest of those symptoms was disordered sleep. That hasn't gotten any better and is the biggest issue that I see in any job-seeking future.

For awhile, I thought the root of the problem was getting to sleep. And it is a part of the problem. But when I take an honest look at it, I have times when I sleep 24, or even 48, hours, straight through. At the very least, when I don't force myself to get up, I sleep about twelve hours. Now, for as much as I know a great many people who'd love to be able to sleep that long, ever, it really isn't normal and it definately isn't condusive to working an outside the home paying job. I have, to a certain extent, been able to get when I go to sleep under control, when I want to, when I take the time and thought to really plan taking certain meds at certain times and then making a point of relaxing after that. Oh, yeah, unless my legs start acting up and then I'm screwed. But getting up on time is.... well, I'm barely able to do it. With the exception of my uncle's chemo days and then I'm on it.

Which leads people to tell me to just FORCE myself to get up on time, to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be like a normal person. I mean, if I can do it for my uncle's chemo day, why can't I do it for other days? For a regular job? Or an irregular job? Well, mostly because that takes alot out of me. Friday I slept all day, until about 9pm. I was only up until about 3am until I went back to sleep and didn't get up again until I was dragged out of bed at 8:40pm. I also slept for over 12 hours on Sunday. I was up all day Monday, only to sleep 25 hours on Tuesday. So being up to make sure my uncle is on time and has company meant that I slept through the next five days. I don't mean for that to sound like I'm complaining. I'm not and it's totally worth it to be there for my uncle. BUT that's the reality of my situation.

So I'm starting to wonder if, after all this is done, all I have to look forward to is a string of mind-numbing part-time jobs, which barely pay for my meds anyway, that I keep for a maximum of a year. This really isn't alot to look forward to. When the doctor at the pulmonologist suggested I go on disability, honestly, I was kinda appalled. I guess my main thought was that I wasn't really that bad, I wasn't dis-abled enough by my condition that I was unable to work. There's also another part of me that suspects that, if I got disability, it would take it away from another person who had less resources than I. But now I'm worried that, even when the economy gets better and all this is done, I won't be able to find and maintain a paying job, even a part-time one.

Not sure what I'm looking for here guys. Guess partly just to vent and share my own experience. Maybe to find some advice or experience that I haven't heard before, though I'm not sure that exists. Fuck. Whatever.

CPOS vs HNMG

2010-01-26T03:04:00.001-06:00

"I could never be in an open relationship," is something I hear quite often from my friends and acquaintances. Strangely, most of these people have cheated, have been cheated on, are currently cheating, or are actively contemplating cheating on their significant other. Hell, I was one of those people myself. I was a Cheating Piece of Shit in every single monogamous relationship I attempted. That was part of what lead me to try being an Honest Non-monogamous Gal.

"I would be too jealous. I couldn't stand the thought of my significant other being with someone else." Jealousy is actually another big reason why I chose to be non-monogamous. In a strange way, I trace most of my cheating back to my own jealousy. Here's the script: Significant Other is currently having a life- hanging out with people of both sexes, doing things that I'm not particularly interested it, working, going to school. During this time when SO is not with me, my big imagination is writing stories about a BJ from a waitress at the restaurant SO's friends hang at or a passionate but as yet unconsummated love affair with the nerd chick in SO's robotics class. These imaginings lead to me starting fights, making accusations, being cold, and generally pushing my partner away. Now I begin to feel a distance, not realizing that I created it, but it still leads me to feel unloved, uncared for, etc, which means that I'm unworthy. Then, when someone, anyone, starts to show me attention, affection, well, I jump at the chance to feel good again. What's worse is that the guilt about the cheating makes me feel even worse about being around my SO, the one person I actually do want to work it all out with, so I'm left with the only person who still makes me feel good, the person I cheated with.

So why not flip the script? If I'm always dreaming imaginary liasons for my SO, why not let hir have real ones, safely, honestly, and openly? If I'm always worried that my SO wants someone else more than me, won't I feel more secure when zi comes home to me? If I don't push my SO away with the things I only imagine, because I now know exactly what is happening, won't that be one less thing to come between us? And a fresh injection of new attention on my side, without the guilt, could be enough to keep things fresh and new. Also, I think that it helps to break the cycle in which I cling on for dear life to my SO, even when the relationship should have ended long ago, even when we are not good for each other, even when we are emotionally abusing each other, just because I feel like I will have nothing left without that person. Don't get me wrong: That break-up is still gonna hurt like hell. But it makes it easier to know that you have at least one person who's bed you can find comfort in, even if that person isn't ever going to be the next love of your life. Especially because you've hopefully also chosen a person who can be a friend and can understand the grief you're feeling. Maybe you also helped them through theirs.

When I try to explain any part of this to most people, anyone not in the choir, I get the feeling that I'm talking past them. I think some people think I'm a slutty party girl with daddy issues who is sleeping around until she finds her Prince/Princess Charming. I think other people think I'm jaded, had one too many bad relationships, but that it will all change when I meet the right person. The rest just think I'm a weirdo. None of them think that it will ever work. That someone will get hurt, that someone is bound to get jealous, that no one will ever be happy in this situation. That is true. But do you know what else is true? That people in monogamous relationships get hurt, get jealous, and very few, if any, are happy. I can't say that this take on relationships has worked spectacularly, but my previous take didn't either. But I can say that it leaves me feeling more in control of my own life and more honest, both with other people and myself. As with anything, it's for now. And, for now, it works.

After my rather long silence on my blogs, I was driven to write this after reading this blog post on the marriages of other people. (I might write another post later dealing more directly with the post but not tonight. I'm almost tired.) But it reminded me that the systems we are given and that we are supposed to accept without question are often very flawed and work for very few people. Everyone has to build their own lives and their own relationships. There is no one way. And I guess that's what I should start telling my friends.

It's Not Christmas 'til Somebody Cries

2009-12-24T17:40:00.001-06:00

Ah, the Holiday Season! As everyone knows, it's supposed to be a time for giving, sharing, rejoicing, loving, and being with your family, but once translated through our own imperfections, it becomes a hectic time during which we're dragged down by obligation, consumerism, attempts at perfection, and whatever kind of dysfunction is created by the gathering of our family or friends.

"It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries." I heard my mom say this a couple weeks ago in response to some Christmas-themed television show. Today, she informed me that she thought it came from parents whose children cried from crankiness because of a lack of sleep while attempting to wait for Santa or whose toys got lost or whatever. But at the time she said it, all I could think of was my pre-teen and teenage years, when my step-dad (a grinch by upbringing) and I would always get into a fight, which ended in me crying and running out of the room. The fights always revolved around his desire for me to be more "sociable" with our family. Now, I'm an only child who's always been a bit introverted. I was being as sociable as I felt comfortable being. I was never rude and I attempted conversation with everyone, but I never had anyone my own age in our family, nor anyone I really had a great deal in common with, so, eventually, I'd end up sitting in a corner, reading a book or watching TV, though I always jumped right up to help do anything the adults needed, like setting the table. Looking back, I think that, as my step-dad and mom were usually cooking at holidays or doing some kind of work, my step-dad thought I should be doing the entertaining of our relatives, so they weren't as bored as I clearly was. But I didn't get that at the time and he didn't say it that way so.... we fought. And I cried. Which then made him look bad in front of our relatives, which made him more mad and grumpy, which then might lead to aftershock fights. For so long, I really hated holidays with my family because I thought there was no way around those fights. I don't think I came around to trying harder or just living through the fights until, after another fight with my uncle, during which he got so upset with me that he walked out, I realized how much Christmas, and all the other family holidays, meant to him. But it really has come to mean alot to me.

Last Christmas was full of a great deal of crying. It was the first Christmas without my Grandfather. Now he really loved Christmas. I don't think he was much for the smaltzy, sentimental side of Christmas, but he loved funny Christmas movie (Christmas Vacation especially) and tv specials. He liked Christmas music, always turning the cable tv to the seasonal music channel. He liked watching people open gifts, though Grandma always did all their Christmas shopping as soon as she could pry a Wish List out of us, and she started asking in September. But, from what Gram told me, which I'm not sure how reliable of a narrator she was, every year Grandpa would get gussied up and go shopping on the last possible shopping day. He liked to do it during the day of Christmas Eve, but that wasn't always possible, as we had several Christmas in Very Big Midwestern City, when I lived there with my mom and step-dad, as that was also where the rest of my step-dad's family lived and we were all friends. Grandpa liked watching the people though. Usually, he only bought one present, always for my grandma. Sometimes it would be something he knew she or they needed but that Grandma kept saying they couldn't afford yet, though it was quite often jewelry. Never costume jewlery either, but real diamonds and rubies. When he had had his fill of humanity, he'd come home, wrap the present, scrawl out the gift tag in his shaky hand, and set it carefully under the tree. (Well, except the tv. That he covered with a blanket in the guest room until Christmas morning, then he took her in the room to show her the present.) But, whether it's true or not, I still love this story about my grandpa. So it was hard last year to celebrate without him, without his cheer and his sparkle. Without the ham we had to have because Grandpa wouldn't eat any kind of fowl. Without his skiing Santa animated toy. Both sides of the family were at my step-dad's parents' house. I was in pain from falling on the ice the day before. I was angry that my step-dad's parents had invited a friend from their church to what was a very emotional Christmas for those of us on my mother's side. I went out to the garage to smoke and ended up crying, though I tried to be careful not to mess up my makeup. My grandma came out to have a cigarette as well and she said that I couldn't cry because then she'd cry and if she started crying, she might not stop. She also pointed out that Grandpa wouldn't have wanted us to be sad on Christmas, but to celebrate the family, the funny and weird, and even the consumerism of contemporary gift giving. She also reminded me that it wouldn't do a damn bit of good to try to tell my other grandparents anything because they wouldn't understand, they'd do what they wanted to anyway, and I'd be the only one upset. Of course, on this she was right and I didn't say anything, though I didn't really enjoy the time anymore than I already was.

Which brings me to this Christmas. No one in my mother's family seemed to really feel like celebrating, with both Grandma and Grandpa gone and my uncle in the middle of chemo. Also, no one has a great deal of money or wants any gifts. As my maternal uncle can't really travel, we decided to skip the trip to my step-dad's parents' house. But, well, I can't help trying to push for a bit of the holiday spirit. I offered to put up and decorate our Christmas tree, if my step-dad would be so kind as to bring it out of our storage shed, and Mom asked me to put up garland and bows on the patio fence. Doing that spread the holiday spirit, which we've all managed to pump up in each other since then. Even the shitty "blizzard warning" weather couldn't dampen my spirit. I was all smiles on my drive home from last night, hanging out with TyRoy and getting showered with gifts.

Until I didn't get friended on a stupid social networking site. I set up a new account last week when my original one was disabled. During the original setup, it took "possible friends" from my email account, a different email account than the one used to setup the first page. The possibles included Sir. I was in such a hurry that I just allowed everyone. It wasn't until a few days later that I started to wonder. Well, seeing him on there made me think about him, at which point I listened to some music he gave me. When listening to Counting Crow's "A Long December," I got stuck on "And if you think that I could be forgiven / I wish you would." Now, I know that we "lost touch" because, after I revealed on my blog, which his girlfriend read, that he was seeing someone else as well, he texted me that I had "burned the bridge with him." But isn't Christmas and New Year about catching up with people, about forgiveness, about figuring out why you lost touch in the first place and fixing it? So I periodically checked all my friends, to see if it still showed "request pending" or not.

Well, I got my answer today. He had disappeared from my "All Friends" page, which includes the pending requests. As he wasn't a friend and he wasn't still pending, he had denied my request. Maybe I would have had better luck if I'd thought about those song lyrics and included them in my request. I try to keep reminding myself that he's from one of those Italian families where someone becomes dead to you when they wrong you too many times or too severely. Even if he wanted to, he probably wouldn't go against that. I try to remind myself that he doesn't know that I'm not completely that same person, that I'm on better drugs, that I've gotten used to being alone and keeping a great deal more inside, that I've found a level of compassion I didn't know I nad. I try to remind myself that I'm not sure I really want to be friends with him, in a reality kinda way, as I don't know who he is anymore and I was starting to realize that there were things I really didn't like about him when we were still friends. But all I feel is that I got the ultimate "coal in my stocking" Christmas present, that I wasn't good enough, then and I'm not good enough, now to be friends with. Happy Christmas to you too, Sir.

It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries. I just wish it wasn't always me.

What Would You Do?

2009-11-20T01:02:00.002-06:00

What would you do if you observed a crowd of people in which several people were fighting?

Those fighting are all high school-aged boys. While you cannot tell exactly who is fighting who, there does not appear to be one boy who is being singled out for attack.

I'll let you think for a minute.......

To me, it seems like there are three options: stop the fight yourself, call the cops, or do nothing.

Ever since I was in this situation, I have been wondering how the people that I know (think they) would react in this situation and why. Especailly why if you pick the third option.

The third option is what I chose.

So here is what happened: For those of you who don't know, I live just down the street from a high school. Many of the students walk right by my house on their way to and from school, which offers me no shortage of laughs when they wander into my yard and promptly step in my dogs' crap. (hehehehe) And aside from a little bit of traffic conjestion and teenagers' smoking on the corner, we've never had any problems. Last week, just as school was letting out, I heard a commotion outside, which, as I was standing near the basement windows, I was just at the right level to see. Outside, there was a decent-sized crowd, mostly boys, but a few girls. The noise of the crowd was unmistakenly that of a fight. I didn't really see any contact being made in the fight, mostly just swinging fists. The fight, followed by the crowd, moved into the street and then across the street as well, backing up cars full of teenagers and parents.

I thought about it, and I ended up doing nothing. Not that there was a great deal of time to do anything anyway, as high school fights are usually over before they start. Now, I thought about calling the cops. Hell, there is a station down the street, directly across the street from the school. But I kinda felt like "boys will be boys." A certain amount of fighting is to be expected, right? I'm not saying that I think a boy has to fight or that a girl can't/shouldn't. But I just don't think it's that big of a deal.

Now a normal person would probably have stopped thinking about it after that. Or after they knew that no one was hurt. But I'm not a normal person. The first thing I thought about was the recent death of a high school boy in Chicago, which a bystander could record on his/her cell phone but didn't do anything to help. At the time, in the national news at least, there was a great deal of talk about bystanders not helping or intervening, as well as speculation that the cops wouldn't get anywhere because of a culture of "stop snitching." Of course, just a cursory look at a few more recent articles shows show that the boy appears to be an innocent bystander who walked into a fight between rival neighborhood gangs, then becoming the target of one group's rage. Many bystanders and people at the nearby community center came to help the boy once the others stopped, but, honestly, seeing the video and reading that they were swinging railway ties... well, I don't think I'd be jumping in that fight either. Hell, there was no way I was jumping in the rather minor skirmish outside my own house. But still, shortly after the fight, I was wondering, "What if one of those kids had died and I did nothing to stop it?"

About a decade ago, as a scared and depressed recent college dropout, I went to a lookout area in my boyfriend's hometown, to think and kill some time while waiting for him to come back to his folks house. My reverie was interupted by a girl's screams and a boy's yelling. A young man was dragging a young woman down the path, telling her that she was never going to get away from him, that he was going to kill himself and take her with him, etc. I knew there was no way I could really do anything directly against him. So I did the next best thing. I called the cops. These were the days before everyone had a cell phone, so I ran to the nearest house, got no answer, ran to the next, got no answer, then finally found someone home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. I saw the cops when I went back to get my car. She didn't look physically hurt. I felt satisfied that I'd done the right thing.

Another thing I've thought of quite a bit since witnessing the fight is what psychology calls "the bystander effect." Basically, the more people there are, the less likely an individual is to help, intervene, or call for help. In part, this is because people think that someone else will call for help. Also, people take their cues on how to react from those around them, so if everyone around them seems calm and isn't acting, they also stay calm and don't act. Maybe this is why I reacted when I was the only one around but did not act when I knew there were a dozen plus other witnesses. At the time, I could have very well dismissed this as just an overly-emotional teenage lover's spat. We all like to think that we are good people who would "do the right thing" in any given situation. But would we really? And how do we know what the right thing is?

So..... please tell me..... what would you do?

Differential Diagnosis II : Lungs of a 90 Year Old

2009-10-30T03:07:00.002-05:00

Apparently what I'm going through is all the pre-House-episode stuff that the patient goes through before they get to be treated by House's illustrious team.

The steriods worked great, when I was taking them three and four times a day. See, you get a blister-pack, with how many pills you are supposed to take and when. You start out with about 8 pills a day and gradually back off, taking one pill the last day. Of course, the steriods also caused me to feel alittle manic, with bouncing off the walls energy, but I kept reminding myself of how I got the energy and that I'd pay later, in sleep and perhaps depression, which helped. But on the night before the last day, I started coughing again. And despite supposably being better than Prilosec, the Nexium wasn't making a noticable difference. I was back to where I'd been before. My biggest comfort was that at least I knew I wasn't contagious and my coughing couldn't make my uncle, or any other member of my family, sick. I was resigned to the fact that the cough was here to stay.

I did, however, have a slight shift in thinking, if not a full blown change of heart. A friend of mine, who I know is very aware of how his own body looks, but doesn't limit the kinds of food he eats, brought up that he just cut back his portion sizes when he started to feel like he was putting on a few pounds. It meant that he could still enjoy any kind of food he wanted to, just not as much, though he'd always save the rest for a later meal or share it with someone else. This would also be very helpful for me, since I've overeaten to the point of being ill several times over this past summer and fall. So I decided then that I'd really try to eat less, control my portions, and not drink so much soda, which is really just empty calories, no matter how much I love it.

I expected a disheartening but uneventful follow-up appointment. But the Physicians Assistant brought up the chest x-ray and a breathing test, just to be sure. I agreed, though I was pretty sure that it was going to come back all clean and she'd tell me to lose weight and change my diet. But that was not the case. The chest x-ray was fine, unless the doctor finds something that was hiding under my nipple piercings. It was the breathing test that came back with more troubling results. The PA told me that I had the lungs of a 90 year old. Now, I've done a bit of internet research and "lung age" seems to be less a diagnostic explanation and more something that sounds scary and is used to scary smokers into quitting smoking, because you put it in terms someone can understand. Now, that doesn't mean that it's wrong or untrue. I think she wanted to convey in real-world terms how bad my breathing and lungs seem from their tests, so that I'll be more likely to go the distance in going to see a pulmonologist, who she is hoping will be able to tell me what is wrong with me, despite the fact that I don't have insurance and would have to come up with the money on my own. I think if I wasn't on the lithium, I would have cried right there in the exam room.

I am already in the process of setting up an appointment with a pulmonologist at a local university hospital that my uncle's boyfriend has been able to set up payment plans with, in the hopes that it will be easy for me to do the same thing. The hospital's pulmonology division is currently waiting to get my records from the primary care doctor, then they'll call me to make an appointment time. That was the PA's main treatment plan, though she also gave me a sample of Symbicort, which is for COPD and asthma, and she says should help. She promises to try to get more samples for me. As for the previous push to lose weight, etc, that seems to not be as important now, at least until I get a more firm diagnosis. She must have overlooked that I'm on lithium when I was there for my first appointment, because, when she did mention weight loss this time, she told me that, because I was on lithium, it would be more difficult that usual, so I shouldn't feel too bad if I can't really lose weight, though losing weight and being more active will always help and I should still change what I eat, at least to help manage the acid reflux.

The hardest part right now is the waiting and not knowing. I don't know what is wrong or why or what caused it or what to do about it. I don't know what it will cost to treat it. One thing that is kinda driving me crazy right now is that everything I see online attributes almost all of these things to smoking, but I just can't imagine that the small amount of smoking I've done in my life has done this much damage, especially when compared to regular smokers my age and older, who don't have similar problems yet. Yes, I'm aware that ANY amount of smoking will do some damage to your lungs. But not this much from that little. Then again, Christopher Reeves' wife died from lung cancer and she never smoked a day in her life. (Not to say that I think I have cancer. I absolutely do not think I have cancer.) But this is where your mind goes while you are waiting for an answer. Especially when you know that few doctors are as brilliant as House, not that you have the money to pay him.

Differential Diagnosis

2009-10-07T20:16:00.002-05:00

In July, I developed strep. Yep, in the middle of summer, during a period where I saw very few people, I somehow developed strep. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal, but my stomach didn't like the antibiotics. Even once the strep was gone, I still had a weezy cough that cough medicine and mucinex didn't really help. The cough reminded me alot of the cough that I had before I went on medication for acid reflux, so I thought that my esophagus might have just gotten extra-more-irritated during the stomach vs. antibiotics battle and began to take a larger dose of over-the-counter generic prilosec than I had previously. (I was also thinking that my recent weight gain probably wasn't helping either.) That didn't seem to help though. I was still coughing, with weezing on and off. I didn't really want to do anything about it, mostly because I felt like it was mostly psychosomatic, a symptom of the larger depression while staying alone at my grandma's house. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money that we don't really have only to be told it was in my head. But my mom was worried that it was contagious and that I might make my immuno-compromised uncle sick, so I went back to the walk-in clinic where I'd been treated for strep. The nurse practitioner there told me that it was bronchitis and to go to a doctor for a chest x-ray if I wasn't better at the end of the antibiotics that she was going to prescribe. On the one hand, I felt... vindicated? because she was telling me that it wasn't all in my head. It wasn't even because I was overweight. It was just being sick. On the other hand, I might be contagious and/or it might be something, or turn into something, serious.

But I was optimistic. I took the antibiotics. On the first day, I felt great. No weezing. No cough. Second day, I still felt fine. After 24 hours, I was no longer contagious, so I could leave the isolation of my grandma's house and go home. But, alas, it was just the placebo effect. By the night of my third day on the antibiotics, I was back to the weezing and coughing. Of course, I felt decent during the daytime, so I didn't take advantage of any doctor's office hours, for a few days. Eventually, though, it was getting ridiculous. Last night, just taking a small bag of trash outside from the basement had me reaching for an inhaler. Plus, once again, if I'm going to help my uncle during his chemo, I have to be well myself, or at least not contagious, so today I went to the doctor. A real doctor, not a walk-in clinic. Well, kinda. All I could get on short notice was a physician's assistant at my former primary care doctor's office, but still.

And..... the diagnosis is...... I'm fat. Ok, well, thankfully the PA didn't say that. But because I haven't had a fever with the cough, it's not an infection, thus neither bronchitis nor contagious. She was fairly sure that it was just severe irritation of the esophagus. She gave me a prescription of a steriod, to help with my breathing, though it will make me a crazy hyper tweeker for the next several days. She also gave me samples of nexium, namebrand and all. Her theory is that I'll only need a protein pump inhibitor, like nexium, for a bit, until my esophagus heals, then I should be able to 'manage' my acid reflux by "eating a proper diet, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding things that irritate it, like caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, spicy foods, acidic foods, etc [or everything good]." I have a follow up in three weeks, so we'll see what happens then, but.... Well, I'll write a later post about what I am thinking about all the dieting and not being fat issues. I just hope this really is what is wrong with me and I start feeling better. I guess I'll worry about the rest as it comes along. But this feels like the lamest episode of House ever.

Crickets

2009-09-27T04:08:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure which I hate more:

The creepy camel/cave/stone cricket that climbs up walls in my basement home in Slightly Smaller Midwestern City and jump diagonally off the wall when you try to kill them, as seen here

The plain-jane crickets here at my Gram's house which I hardly ever see but which are noise as hell and I can never find to kill when I can't sleep because they are chirping so loudly

I remember one summer night here at my Gram's house when I was 10 or 11, suffering from insomnia back in the days when I was still to young to just stay up, which was only exacerbated by the fact that there was a cricket somewhere in the room that just would not stop chirping. I even had a small air cleaner on, as I usually did to drown out any other noises in the house, but that little cricket was a great deal louder than any air cleaner would ever be. So I searched for him in the little back bedroom, moving everything in every corner, but to no avail. I couldn't find him. Ever since, I have hated those buggers.

But, on the other hand, they aren't as creepy as those damn cave crickets.

Yeah, I'm never happy.

Three Days in Bed - Holly Williams

2009-09-19T21:16:00.002-05:00

I think that this is such a beautiful song. And it definately describes how I feel about my life right now. Then again, maybe for everyone, the perfect remedy for even just the everday life is a little danger.

Three Days in Bed - Holly Williams
The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger

We drank all our wine on the champs elysees
We got carried away on the banks of the seine
Woke up on old boulevard St. Germain
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger

You take the hard stuff it..s menthols for me
I don't smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man to please
I'll have one robertino and you can have me

I barely can wait to go back there again
With your body so warm and your face in my hands
You know how I love to meet all your demands
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger

You take the hard stuff it's menthols for me
I don..t smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man please
I..ll have one robertino and you can have me

The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
(Can't embed but here's the link to the video on youtube.)

What I've Been Doing

2009-07-15T08:41:00.003-05:00

Hi all. I know I've been missing for awhile. Mostly I've just felt like I don't have much to say. I've mostly been staying at my Gram's house, taking care of this house and my Gram's very old but still kooky dog. My uncle stays here when he needs to, like when he has doctors appointments or for his semi-monthly experimental chemo treatments. During that time, we both take care of the house. But my uncle wants to live his life, see his friends, and he has his own home six hours away from Gram's that he has to take care of as well. So I end up being alone for many days in a row, over a week at this point, with little to officially do.

Having very little to officially do combined with not having anyone around to see if I do it or not has proven to be a recipe for... well, not a recipe for disaster, more a recipe for slackertude. Actually, that might not be the best description either. Shit. Ok, so officially, this past week+ while my uncle has been gone, I only had to care for the house and dog. I've done that. The house is clean. The flowers outside are watered and healthy. The dog is fed, watered, and petted. My mom asked me to go through, sort, and donate my grandma's clothes and to also clean up, arrange, etc, Gram's computer desk area. But as going through the stuff of someone you've lost can often be difficult and traumatic, Mom said to only do it as I felt up to it. I haven't touched the desk at all. It just seems so daunting. Last Monday, I did finish sorting through and bagging up Gram's clothes to donate. But I still haven't taken them to the donation drop off. Over a week later. FAIL.

On the other hand, the fact I haven't dropped off the donations is not just me being a slacker, but also due to my erratic sleeping schedule, or lack of schedule. I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm the nocturnal house(not)wife. That works for many things, most things these days. I can clean and cook (yes folks, I've been cooking a bit lately) anytime. I'm up by dinnertime, which means I can cook that for my uncle and I, when he's here. I also water the plants late in the evening. I can even do the shopping, as we have several 24-hour grocery stores and Walmarts in our area. I was even able to drag myself out of bed early enough to go to a Happy Hour sponsored by a local lesbian group held actually in the Slightly Larger Midwestern City. (Gram's house is in the suburbs of said city.) What I haven't been able to do it get up and go to the art museum, a matinee art house flick in the city, go swimming at the neighbor's house, or get my Gram's clothes to the donation center. Sigh. Ah, well, at least I still have stuff to do if I've ever up during the day.

Obviously, this rather uninteresting life doesn't necessarily lend itself to a ton of posts about my life. And I'm blaming drugs for my (fiction) writer's block.

But I'm not completely cut off. I have the internet here (which means liberal blogs) and cable tv with DVR. Ah, DVR, how I love you. We had just gotten a DVR at my parents' house before I left but only on the tv upstairs, the one my parents watch until they go to sleep, the only one with digital cable (=BBC America, G4, Logo, On Demand channels) and HBO. Downstairs, I have expanded basic cable on a jerry-rigged connection we don't officially have with two VCRs hooked up in tandem so I can tape two shows and watch a third all at the same time. Gram's system is pretty nice. Despite not having HBO (which means I have to catch up on True Blood whenever I visit my parents' house), Gram's system allows me to DVR a ton of shows and watch them anytime on whichever tv I want. In addition to DVRing regular shows, I've been recording quite a few movies, mostly from the Sundance Channel. So I thought I'd share ideas I had about movies I had seen. But beware *****SPOILERS AHEAD*******

Wallander: One Step Behind (Season 1, Episode 3) (PBS Mystery)
I really wanted to like this. I wanted a more contemporary British mystery series to get addicted to, especially one that I could watch when I was without BBC America. But it turns out this isn't a British series. It is based on a Danish mystery series, set and filmed in Denmark, though they plopped a very tired and old-looking Kenneth Branagh along with a bunch of dark-haired very British people into. It was confusing.

My biggest complaint was their use of what I can only term as the "transgender killer" gimmick. Sadly, that same week, one of my favorite shows, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, did the same type of thing with the same insensitivity. I think that mainstream television is getting away from reflexively showing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people as necessarily having something mentally wrong with which causes them to be a criminal. Unfortunately, they have a long way to go in how they portray transgender people, who they all turn into Norman Bates from Psycho. Not only is it not true, it's insulting. Though it's been awhile since I've seen it so I might be wrong, I think a good example of a procedural crime drama with a plot that dealt with the transgender community, including having a killer who is transgender is CSI: Ch-ch-changes (Season 5, Episode 8), which shows a variety of lifestyles that transgender people live and issues that they deal with in a compassionate manner and without making it seem like the murderer killed because she is a scary, pathologically evil deviant.

I'm a Cyborg But That's Ok (Sundance Channel)
Yeah, the title got me too. In fact, I DVRd it on the crazy title alone. Happily enough, it turned out it's directed by Chan-wook Park, this crazy Korean director. The films of his that I'd seen previously were part of his vengeance trilogy (I recommend Oldboy), which are dark, gritty, violent, and bloody. That's why I was surprised at the relative lightness of this movie. The premise is that a young woman, distressed by her Alzheimer's-stricken grandmother's institutionalization, comes to believe she is a cyborg on a mission to kill the "white coats" who locked up her grandmother. Of course, her beliefs land her in a mental institution filled with other colorful characters. It sorta reminds me of the lightness and quirkiness of Amelie, though in a mental institution, directed by a guy who focuses on fear, violence, and pain. It doesn't have a Hollywood ending, but that's ok.

My favorite part involves how they patient who has a crush on the cyborg convinces her to eat, as ensuring that patients eat is a big deal in mental institutions (believe me). She tries to lick batteries and such to recharge, but that isn't working, both in that she doesn't have alot of energy and that the "white coats" are trying to force her to eat. Our cyborg is afraid that she'll rust if she puts human food in her body. So the man crushing on her convinces her that he has created a device, which he then implants in her, that will transfer human food into energy that will recharge her cyborg body. It is a very tense but happy set of scenes.

Sadly, this movie is not available on DVD in the US yet.

Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rossett and Grove Press (Sundance Channel)
This hilarious documentary focused on how Barney Rossett, a Chicago-bred, socialist schoolboy, ran the controversial publishing outfit Grove Press that published, and went to court to continue to publish, the first American editions of Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer. Grove Press was also the American publisher of Samuel Beckett, as well as the publisher of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Rossett's office was bombed the day that Grove Press' literary magazine published the first chapter of Che Guevara. Rossett brought I Am Curious Yellow to the US, showcasing the new style, politics, and frank sexuality emerging in Swedish film in the late 1960s. He spent his life bringing works of art, mostly literary, that he found interesting, stimulating, radical, and worthwhile to the American public.

Oh the other hand, Grove Press was only profitable for a handful of years. Rossett was eventually pushed out of the company. He is pretty much a broke, elderly man, living in an apartment several flights of stairs up from the street.

Maybe the end is kinda sad. Guess that's why they add the footage of him playing with his dog. But it's still really interesting to learn the story, and to have it told to you in part by this old man who I can barely imagine being called a smut peddler and deviant back in the day.

Vanishing Point (1997 version) (Fox Movie Channel)
I'd been slightly interested in seeing the original 1971 flick since I watched the Deathproof half of Grindhouse. I recorded this to watch while I drifted off to sleep, as I figured that the remake wouldn't be nearly as good as the original, not even realizing at the time that the 1997 version was a made-for-tv movie.

For the most part, it was kinda lame. Some decent car chases, but way too much trying to combine Catholicism with Native American traditions to guide the guy back home in a way that avoids the cops. But some of the underlying politics really piqued my interests. The main character, speeding cross-country to be with his wife who's in labor, being chased by police just for speeding, becomes a folk hero in large part to a radio DJ, named The Voice and played with unintentional hilarity by Jason Priestly, who tells all his listeners about the plight of this one good man trying to evade the big bad government. Now I think that The Voice's radio callers are supposed to sound like cranks and nutjobs, that this driver is supposed to be the one conspiracy that The Voice gets right. But to me, these guys sound like any caller to a (usually right-wing) radio talk show. Well, if the host actually let them talk long enough to say more than "I dis/agree with you." Of course, it also reminds me of the recent govt report warning of a rise in right-wing extremism and the furor that it was met with. This film was made during the Clinton era, after the Oklahoma City bombing, and it portrays the FBI as trigger happy to label anyone as part of a violent militia. It seems interesting that a mainstream television network would make a movie with that kind of a sentiment- that the government is coming after you, even if you are a (mostly) law-abiding citizen. Then again, I guess it was Fox that made the movie. It seems like an interesting snapshot from that era.

That Obscure Object of Desire (Sundance)
Speaking of time capsules...
There are some things in this movie that I'm hoping can only be explained by the time period.

Let's go back a step. This is a 1977 French movie by Spanish expat director Luis Bunuel, who's films have always had a surrealist bent and pointed out flaws and hypocrisies in religion, the upper classes, and contemporary life and mores. This movie follows a wealthy old Frenchman's tale to his train car mates about his romantic pursuit of the young bruised woman they had all just seen him dump a pail of water on before the train left the station. He explains to them that he'd pursued this young woman, gave her and her poverty-stricken mother money to live on, but that he'd grown increasingly frustrated when she would not have sex with him. At one point in his story, he even attempts to rape her and is only stopped by her chastity belt briefs. In the end, the morning after a particularly bad argument in which she says she doesn't love him and proceeds to get naked with a much younger man in front of him, the Frenchman beats the woman and makes plans to leave town, which is where our story started.

The biggest thing that struck me was the the Frenchman's train mates think this is all perfectly ok. These are all upper-class people - a psychologist, a judge, and a well-to-do mother with her child. While they think that it is curious that the Frenchman would dump the water on the woman, they didn't necessarily think it wrong. The Frenchman tells the story to show why he'd have been justified in killing her and they agree with him by the end of his story. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.

Upon further thought, though, maybe Bunuel was using this to point out that the morals of these upstanding upper-class members of society are a bit out of whack. None of them seem to think it wrong that this man is trying to seduce a much younger woman who he refuses to marry. Bunuel also seems to point to the flexible morals of the religious with the actions of the mother of the young woman. The mother is a devout Catholic, who attends Mass frequently, and doesn't want her daughter to work because she has heard of the temptations that young woman face out there. But she happily departs the house, to go to church, as soon as the Frenchman arrives, leaving him alone with her daughter. Of course, she takes the money the Frenchman gives her first. The mother also seems very happy to allow her daughter to go live with the Frenchman, without any promises of marriage, but an envelop of money in her hand. It seems like the mother turns a very blind eye because of the man's class and money.

But the coolest thing about this movie was that Bunuel used two different actresses to play the main female role. Both women are thin, dark-haired, and in their early 20s, but they look different enough that you notice - different hair texture, facial structures, temperaments. The actresses do a whole scene, don't change in the middle of a scene. There's no real rhyme or reason as to which scenes a particular actress is in. At first, I wasn't even sure it was happening. I read online somewhere that some viewers don't ever notice. When asked in an interview why he did this, Bunuel said that one of the actresses walked out mid-movie and he didn't want to reshoot her scenes. On the other hand, Bunuel was known to lie about his method and the ideas behind his directing. The info about the movie on the cable box said that the woman had split personalities, but I don't think that's the reason for the two actresses because that's never presented in the movie and the woman doesn't actually present two different and distinct personalities, much less personalities that correspond to the different actresses. I wonder if it wasn't in part to show how changing and volatile people of that age are (the woman says she's 18), as well as pointing out the artifice of film, that the actresses you see are never really the characters they portray. But this method of having more than one actor play the same character in a movie is still quite out there more than 30 years later when we hear about I'm Not There and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Sundance)
This movie left me kinda empty. It was on all the critic's must-see lists a year or two back and it's on an important topic but... I don't know. I guess I already know the lesson this film is supposed to teach.

In 1980s Romania, a college student helps her roommate get a very illegal, very dangerous abortion in a hotel room. Yeah, that's all I have to say about it.

This is England (Sundance)
I never thought I'd write this, but I think I want to learn more about British skinheads.

Set in 1983, this movie is about a 12 year old boy who just lost his dad in the Falklands War and falls in with an older group of kids (16-19) who just happen to be skinheads, though one of them is black. (Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we can all see where this is going already.) I recognize the brick red tall Dr Martens and the tight rolled-up jeans, mostly from tv docs I've seen with American skinheads, but I've also seen them on (archival-hehe) footage of ska kids and sometimes punk kids in the 80s and early 90s. While I can't remember the name of this damn song, I remember Sir telling me once that this ska song we.... Shit, I finally found it. Ok, so the song is "A Message to You Rudy" by the ska band The Specials, which he'd previously thought was just a message to someone they knew named Rudy. But it really had to do with "rude boys", originally a slang term for juvenile delinquents in Jamaica that traveled to the UK and started to mean someone who was involved in the ska subculture. Sir said that the it was the band's message to the racist skinhead ska faction to stop with all that, though, looking at the actual lyrics now, it doesn't say that anywhere in the actual lyrics. Oh well. Also, looking at wiki a bit, it looks like skinheads really started as a branch off of British mod culture, when young people, even working class young people, started to have a bit more disposable income and spent it on their own style. Originally it had nothing to do with politics and wiki speculates that the men cut their hair that short because it would be dangerous to wear long hair in industrial jobs and in fights and also because middle-class kids were currently growing their hair long. That's all very interesting. I'll really have to read up more on that.

Anyway, I also found this to be an interesting movie in how you see the small ways in which this kid starts to fall into this group and how an older more politically motivated skinhead exploits this kid's loss to get his loyalty. It's kinda scary how little it can take when a person is young and/or vulnerable. (I hope I don't meet a cult leader anytime soon or I'm done for.) Overall, great period piece.

Well, that's all I have for you right now, kiddies. I'll try not to stay gone so long again.

Re: Weight Cycling

2009-06-22T03:16:00.002-05:00

I sent on the post The Weight Cycle to my mom and I thought I'd share her response:
Very well said my beautiful daughter! So riddle me this one....why each and every time I go to my primary care doc am I told to "lose some weight". Followed by a resounding "at-ta boy" each time I drop 10 or so pounds below the weight of my last visit, even though it appears to be the same 10 pounds over and over again. However, he never advises against the harm to my health this constant "yo yo"-ing might cause. At what % above your ideal weight would it be better to just remain at that weight as opposed to going up and down above and below it? Why does no one discuss that? What would happen to Oprah's image if she said "I'm staying put - live with it"? Well, I'd support her running for president, wouldn't you?
Mom

My rather uneducated response to my mom:
I think that doctors try to steer their patients towards healthier lifestyles and there has been a great deal of research that shows at the very least a corelation between being overweight and many harmful medical conditions. Also, we really like one-size-fits-all solutions in our society, so we have that great height/weight chart that only allows a small window of weight which is acceptable, regardless of body type, age, or anything else. Now there is a movement, especially in the fat-acceptance community, to stop equating weight with health, instead focusing on being active, eating healthy, and not really caring about weight. I think they do have some medical and academic support but not a great deal of it.

As for the yo-yo-ing aspect of things, a quick internet search pulled up a couple articles about the dangers of yo-yo dieting,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Yo-Yo-Dieting---Dangerous-Weight-Loss?&id=153031
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21745which they restrict to meaning using a quick fad diet to lose the weight and then one puts it back on quickly when you go off the diet. This isn't exactly what I was talking about, but the more general regaining of weight after a diet, though I think the studies that the articles cite seem to address what I was talking about too. It seems like the "weight cycling slows your metabolism" is widely regarded as a myth, but there are corelations between weight cycling and a supressed immune system, higher risks of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and gallbladder disease. This article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19621031 says that we should go on dieting because there is a higher corelation of more health conditions among overweight people than there are among (I'm assuming, not currently overweight) weight cyclers.

*Eyeroll* I'm not sure how much I believe that it is better for my overall person - physical, mental, spiritual - for me to continue to weight cycle and feel shitty about my body. So I think I might try a combination of the fat acceptance route along with the "gotta die from something" route. Especially right now, as I'm seeing someone who actually prefers bigger women, women bigger than me.

The Weight Cycle

2009-06-20T17:50:00.001-05:00

Newsweek recently did a cover story on Oprah, some of the questionable medical advice that some of her guests present, and why this doesn't seem to hurt her ratings or make her look like just another trashy daytime tv talk show host. While I found it interesting to hear what doctors say about Suzanne Somers' bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, this is what really struck me:

"Oprah, of course is notoriously bad at sticking with the advice Oz [non-quack
doc] and Greene [personal trainer] dispense, especially when it comes
to her weight. She laments her inability to keep off the pounds. In January she
embarked on yet another attempt to trim down, which means all of Oprah's views
are now-actually or vicariously-on a diet too. She will lose the weight, and
there will be much remarking upon it. But then, in a year, or two, or three,
experience teaches us that the fat will likely come back. And she will lament.
And then she will do it all over again, with a whole new set of experts armed
with the latest breakthrough theories on how to live our next best life and
all-new, must-have books and gadgets and ointments to ease the way."

(I would link to the rest of the article, but it's not online.)

Obviously, these writers are lucky enough to never have been overweight (or at least never want to lose that weight) and doesn't have anyone close to them who has gone through this. If they did, they might not brush it off so easily. Almost everyone in my family deals with weight issues. The cycle that he speaks of is one that those of us who are overweight know all too well. Most overweight people don't like being overweight, even if we learn to accept our body as it is. We know that the world would see us as more attractive and healthier if we were thinner, which may or may not be true. What the media, and this article, seem to portray as a failure of will-power or a lack of follow-through is much more complicated than that. Those things may or may not play a role, but what also plays a role are your own metabolism and genes, how active you were as a kid in ways that can translate into adulthood, living and working in environments where one can't walk but has to drive, the physicality (or lack thereof) of your job, that processed/fatty/starchy foods are readily and cheaply available, etc, etc, etc.

I'm not saying that people can't and shouldn't eat healthier foods and get more exercise. But most overweight people that I've known in my life will cycle back and forth and back and forth, just like Oprah. We start something all gung-ho, we work hard, we reach our goals for weight loss and a more fit body. But then time and the everyday wears our resolve down. Also with food, it's especially difficult, as people have to eat. It's not like doing drugs, where you can avoid people who do drugs and places where drugs are sold. We have to go to the grocery store. We have to eat meals. When driving to and from work, it's impossible to not drive past a fast food restaurant. All that makes it that much harder to limit or avoid those things that might have caused you issues in the past. And one has to have priorities in their life. Right now I could work very hard to re-lose the weight that I've gained back. But I have too much other shit going on, so I just don't have the energy or time for that.

I guess it just irritated me because I know how so many (most female) people in my life has struggled with their weight, not just always being overweight, but yo-yo-ing up and down. And I don't think they just gain the weight back because they can't follow advice or are failures or even because their weight loss program was a fad diet. I think they gain it back in large part just because of life and our life in this time and place. Plus, even if you think overweight people are all Wal-mart consuming, mindless, uneducated suckers, as we're 50% of the population, I think you might at least give up some respect for us.

Being a House(not)wife

2009-06-19T02:52:00.000-05:00

In a society where "What do you do?" (which means what job do you perform to earn money) is usually within the first five questions asked when people first meet, I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to being long-term unemployed. I suppose I never realiezed how much 'what we do' can equal 'who we are' to people who don't know us well. Hell, even to people who do know us. Maybe I'm being overly sensative, imagining that people see me in a much more negative light than they really do, because I'm have self-esteem issues with not working right now.

Though to say I'm 'not working' would be a lie. I am not currently a wage-earning worker. When I asked TyRoy what I should say when people ask what I do, his quick response was to tell them that I am a housewife. As that isn't exactly true, in that I am not anybody's wife nor am looking to become someone's wife anytime soon, I do all the typical things a housewife would do - shopping, housecleaning, laundry (just not much cooking because my folks don't like to eat what I can cook) - for my parents. Now I've tried telling people this (that I'm a housewife) but it tends to go over like a lead balloon.

Until two weeks ago, I was looking for wage-earning employment, permanent or temporary, full-time or part-time, while still doing the housewife-ly things until then. Since December, I've had interviews but no job offers. Before that, I'd had some job offers and temp jobs that might have led to offers but I frakked them up. I think my own poor management of my mental health had a good deal to do with it. Since then, I have gotten to a different (hopefully better) place with my medications, though I will always still be me, underneath it all. I honestly don't know that I wouldn't have frakked up any job offer I got between December and now. But with the job market the way it is, I was competing against more people than usual, more people who have better work histories and more skills than me, so I don't begrudge them getting those positions.

Until I found a job, must to continue to play housewife to my parents, more to ease their burden and to give me something to do than anything else, and also try to visit and help out my grandma more. But my plan was always to get a job, work steadily, pay down my debt, fix my car or get a new-to-me car, and move out. I was also hoping to get my Bachelors slowly but surely once things were on track.

I guess nothing has really changed that plan except to put it off, with no real idea of when I'll pick it up. When we realized that my uncle might/would probably need help, even if only with the driving, to get back and forth to his new treatments, my mom told me to just stop looking for a job right now. It's cheaper for our family if my parents contintue to subsidize my bills while I help my uncle than it would be for us to temporarily lose my mother's income, even if I was working and paying my own bills. It makes sense and I'm happy to do it. And, after helping my grandmother when my grandpa had his first stroke, I think I'll be ok doing it, as long as I take time and space for myself, stay abreast of my own needs.

But I still feel this huge hole in my 'plan' and I feel 'less than' because I'm not earning money, don't have a job others would recognize, am a housewife without a husband or my own house.

*Sigh*

On second thought though, I can't imagine how my previously always employed, super-hard-working, very independent uncle must feel right now. I guess I'll count my blessings.

Eulogy for Grandma

2009-06-14T02:24:00.001-05:00

Not really sure if this is how you do these things, but it's what I'm doing. Thought I'd share.

Eulogy

First, I would like to thank you all for coming to say a final goodbye to my grandmother. I know it would have meant a great deal to her to know so many people cared for her.

I would like to share with you how I saw the woman I knew.

As many of you probably already know, I spent a lot of my childhood in my grandparents home. Grandma started a home daycare so that I would have other children to play with. As if the house wasn’t already crowded enough, eight or so pre-kindergarten age children would fill our house in the early morning hours. Somehow, she managed to keep it all together, keeping us all in line, and our parents all happy. She ruled our house with an iron voice, though she wasn’t above a swat on the butt when needed.

But that sense of command wasn’t displayed only in our home. To me, she seemed fearless in dealing with sales people and clerks in stores and waiters in restaurants. When I balked at making a clerk at Sam’s find the pool chemicals instead of finding them ourselves, she said, “It’s called ‘job security.’ If they didn’t have to help me, they wouldn’t have a job.”

Watching my grandma taught me to never to buy into stereotypes. If you think wives from the 1950s were mousy, quiet, and didn’t have a say in their household, well, you’ve never met my grandma. And if you think petite older women are harmless, well, you’ve never met my grandma. I never felt like, as a woman, I didn’t have the right to be loud, opinionated, or bossy. In fact, that’s might be a lesson I learned a little too well…

But she also had a class and dignity all her own. We have never been what one would call rich, but I think that Grandma was extremely proud of the fact that she could give more to her kids than her family had growing up, that she and Grandpa had risen from working poor families to middle class in her lifetime. She would be the first to remind you that that didn’t make her better than, though it certainly didn’t make anyone else better than her. Her fierce pride in her life and her family taught me not to be embarrassed about where I come from or where my family comes from.

For the most part, my grandma lived an average life, though a happy and full one. She was a typical daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and person for her time and place in history. Few people, in the grand scheme of things, ever knew her name. But, as I find out more and more each day, she made a huge difference in the lives of those she touched. I think that was because, as someone more famous than either of us once wrote, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” I think Grandma displayed that kind of freedom. Grandma would listen and give her blunt brand of advice, without ever making you feel judged. She would give you the help she thought best at the time, even if it wasn’t what you thought you needed, and she was usually right that it was what was best. She paid much more attention than most people ever gave her credit for and she was always available to listen and talk for hours.

Two days ago, I called the mother of one of the children Grandma babysat for to tell the family of my grandma’s passing. The woman was so silent that I thought my cell phone had disconnected us. Then, crying, she said that she didn’t know how she would have made it through without my grandma. While I had already known that the woman had put her daughter in the daycare shortly after she divorced and returned to the job force, I didn’t know the deep and abiding respect, appreciation, and admiration this woman had developed for my grandmother, who she saw as a tough-talking, cigarette-smoking, fairy godmother, who both mended the sewing-challenged woman’s clothes before she went to work, and helped her control and learn to deal with her defiant daughter. Now, I’m sure that my grandmother didn’t see this as some heroic feat. She was just doing the right thing, lending a hand, passing on her own wisdom. But it made such a huge difference in this woman’s life. And to me it just drives home that we can all, as the saying goes, be the difference we would like to see in the world. We don’t have to be perfect, in fact it helps not to be. We don’t have to be famous or successful, as the ways we make a difference are small, personal, and simple. But we can and do make profound differences in the lives of the people we meet. Knowing this, I just plan on striving to ensure that the difference I make is a positive one. So that is how I plan on honoring my grandmother’s memory: By using the things I learned watching her, that a tough, opinionated, bossy woman who stays proud of where she comes from and pays attention along the way can make a great difference in the lives of others, to be a constructive force in the world.

Update From SLMC

2009-06-13T02:48:00.002-05:00

So this is the update from the Slightly Larger Midwestern City. My folks came out to my grandmother's house Thursday night. Since it was my birthday and I didn't much want to be with my parents at that point, I spent the night with TyRoy, who did a nice job of providing me with a place of refuge for the night. Friday, my uncle, my uncle's boyfriend, and I carpooled it out here, the driving being split between my uncle's boyfriend and I, who'd both gotten about three hours of sleep the night before, as my uncle is in constant pain, which is much worse when he doesn't take his pain medication on a very strict schedule. We were just in time to spend three hours making the funeral arrangements alongside my parents. Then, it was back to grandma's house to make calls to inform people that the visitation will be Saturday evening and the funeral Sunday afternoon. (We decided there was no point in putting it off and the weekend would mean no one would have to take off work to come.) These calls included calling my other uncle to inform him that his mother had died, which I volunteered for, though no one really wanted to do it after how he behaved when Grandpa died. (Though when I talked to him, he took it all ok, even acknowledging that he had "shown his ass" previously. We'll see how this all shakes out when it comes to Grandma's "estate", such as it is.) We still need to get pictures together and my uncle needs to buy a suit, as none of his really fit anymore, but the immediate things seem to be settling into place.

I worry about my mom, as she seems to be just so very tired, and... defeated, even, which is something I just don't ever remember having seen on her. I tend to think that it is because she has the full weight of all this on her shoulders and, in some ways, her shoulders alone. She is now the leader of our family, the matriarch, a role I'm not sure anyone is ever ready for. She is also the executor of my grandmother's estate, which is mostly just this house that my grandparents built when they first married and the responsibility for taking care of my middle uncle's funeral when he inevitably drinks himself to death or overdoses. Deciding what to do with this house is.... well, I'll just say that I'm glad I'm not the one making the decision, the one with the final say. Though I honestly believe that my mom will be able to handle this fine, once we come out on the other side of the funeral, when things settle down, when there are less people around scrutinizing things.

As for me, I'm planning on speaking at my grandmother's funeral, using my words to try to do some justice to her life. Not that my grandma was a great literary critic, or even an unbiased reader, but she loved reading what she could sneak a peak at over my shoulders or on the computer screen when I would accidentally leave a piece of writing laying around so I could go to the restroom or get a drink. (We are WAY too much alike in our snoopiness.) In the end, she lived the average amount of time, made a house and a home with the man she loved fiercely until the day she died in that very same home, where they had raised three of their own children, one grandchild, and had been loving caretakers for many more children. She was not a saint or even the easiest person to get along with in the best of times, but she touched a great many people in positive ways, as is evident by the people that my family called today to update them on the situation. I think many of us could only hope that we go out that way.

Rest In Peace Grandma

2009-06-11T18:19:00.001-05:00

I don't have time to write more, but funeral planning doesn't wait.

My grandmother died sometime last night. She passed quietly in her sleep in her own bed in the home that she and my grandfathe built over 50 years ago.

I'll thank you all in advance for all your well-wishing. I'll probably write more about my grandmother and about how my family is handling this as things progress. Right now I have to go and make sure I take care of things here before I leave to help take care of things there.

Bomb It and Start Again

2009-05-19T03:11:00.003-05:00

All last week, all I could really think was how much I wished I could just start over. Move far away and become a different person. There are so many reasons why my life right now sucks ass.

Apparently I'm a horrible shrew who nags, never lets things go, and lives to far away for the only sex partner I have (had, who knows). Though I should keep in mind that, if I was a guy, my sex partner would inevitably find me an unavailable, uncommunicative dickhead.
Other would be dating partner and I finally tossed in the towel, after months of me not making any moves on her. Also, she's *TOTALLY* in love with her new-old boyfriend. Which is funny because she said that she wasn't so keen on dating another bi girl because she didn't want to be a side salad to the chicks main course boyfriend.
I have a ton of shitty debts, most unavoidable, like medical bills, that I can't pay so I'm leaching off of others for that and always wondering how I'm going to pay for them.
I can't find a job to save my life. Last week, a corporation where I applied for, tested for, and interviewed for 2 positions at sent me a total of four rejection letters, just in case one letter per job didn't give me enough of a clue that they don't want me.
Volunteering isn't going much better, as I feel so uncomfortable trying to sell people on the organization who are unresponsive or uninterested that I psyche myself out (not in the good way) for later attempts and then just throw in the town all together. Though today I finally heard from the animal shelter. I think I'd be more fulfilled cleaning puppy and kitty poop.
Gram has diabetes and is not following the "diabetic diet" for shit. It could be worse. It's not like she was eating sugar and crap before this. But she does eat lots of starch without any balance. And we aren't there, so we can't make her eat, cook for her, etc. Just another health thing to worry about with her. And each time I try to talk to Mom about one of us being out there with her, I just get shot down, which is sort of a relief because I would be the one and most of me doesn't want to do it, but I still feel like it should be done. It's frustrating. It'd be easier to not think about it or deal with it.
I'm hella tired of my own drugs. I'm tired of the "side effects" that can't be treated with other drugs, the ones that other people seem to just brush off. As MP says, the drugs make me a whole lot less dead, which means that everyone else things they are worth the price paid. But, as I've asked before, when is it not worth it to live as someone else on the meds? I'm tired of being slow, of not feeling like myself, of not being able to even come up with ideas to write fiction stories from, of not being able to make connections between things, of feeling like my IQ is 20 points lower than before, of not feeling creative, of not feeling or wanting to be sexy. I'm tired of the acne, the hair loss, the shakes, the twitches, the change in taste in and of food, and gaining weight at exponential rates.

So, why not go? Why am I still sending out applications for jobs? Why am I cruising CL for a new lover? Why am I making plans for what "homemaker"-y stuff I'm going to do tomorrow?

Well, first, did you read about the job thing? Which leads to a whole "no-money" things?

Oh, yeah, and my uncle has a new tumor. Seems the experimental drug isn't working anymore. He has a broken rib that won't heal because there is a tumor in the middle of it. His oncologist at the Big Cancer Clinic weaseled him into a study they are doing in Slightly Larger Midwestern City, which is good because it is closer to him, but not so great because he has to see Gram everytime he goes. But he's in alot of pain alot of the time and... well, he's not dying this minute or maybe in the next couple of months or maybe even the next year, but it seems like that whole "dance in celebration of remission" the family did was a little premature, if it was even warranted at all. He's 38, for chissakes! He'd just came out and gotten comfortable and gotten a place where he felt at home and now this. (And I guess this is the bargaining phase but) Why couldn't it have been me? At least I want to/have wanted to die.

I just want a couple things to go right at the same time. And for me not to fuck them up.

Friday's Random Bitching

2009-05-01T22:22:00.003-05:00

Is it horrible of me to pass up a possible job opportunity where I'd have to stop my work with the LGBT group that I've been volunteering with and any weekend trips to Slightly Larger Midwestern City to see my Grandma? I didn't even really get into the interview before I was told that it was every weekend, both days, and also a couple shifts during the week, and told to come back to talk to the manager if I was ok with that schedule. So I don't really know if I would have been offered a job or not. Also, it's definately just a job, not a career, probably doesn't pay much more than minumum wage, part-time retail work in a hardware store when I don't know much about tools and such. Maybe I'm just rationalizing because I really don't want to take this job, but I also feel bad in not taking any job that is offered me right now, as it's so hard to find jobs anyway and I am living off other people. Mom won't really answer me about what she thinks I should do. TyRoy said that it is pretty bratty to "turn down a good job." I think our definitions of "good" are vastly different. Honestly, I think I would take a job I didn't think I'd like if the hours weren't every single weekend. And, while I know this is in part my privilege talking, I don't think it's fair to a job to take a job just to take it while I'm actively looking for another job just to dump the first job. Please please please let me know what you think, dear readers.
If 50% of the population is overweight and we can safely assume that is relatively evenly divided among men and women, why are there only 4 plus size clothes racks at Target? There are at least 5 times that many clothes racks for "regular size" clothes. And all of those plus size clothes were casual wear, not what one would wear to even a business casual workplace. Do us fatties not need clothes? Do we not work in professional environments like the non-plus sized women? Should we just stay home, locked up so no one else can see our ugly fat bodies? Do they just not want our money? Grrr. Not that I have any money to buy anything, but I would still like to be able to find clothes that fit my body, especially when there is a large percentage of women who also need the same category of clothes that aren't stocked.
I hate feeling like this medication has made me cognitively slower. Other than the schedule of the position, I also found out in the interview that the job is very fast paced, with either a store full of people or a back-room full of stock to put out. I hate admitting that I thought about stopping the interview there. I have a hard time dealing with a crowd of people, even on my best day. I tend to need a bigger bubble of personal space these days. And I'm just not as fast. I can't get things out of my mouth. I back my car up, only to find that a car has appearred behind me out of nowhere, when I could swear I checked my mirrors before I took my foot off the brake. I remember when I worked at a gas station/convenience store when I was in my late teens. They prided themselves on their friendliness, well-stocked shelves, and cleanliness. By the end of training, we had to be able to do the full cleaning and stocking routine in 2 hours flat. We would get crazy busy at times and I remember being able to handle the rushes. I haven't applied to work for that same company again, though I know I have a great record with them from when I worked, because I know I can't do that stuff as fast, if at all. It's not that I don't think I can do anything. It's just that there are certain things I'm pretty sure I can't do right now.

Well, that's my day. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Addition to the Last Post: I Don't Want to be a Zombie

2009-04-26T10:47:00.001-05:00

Appropriately enough, something that I forgot in the last post is that I seem to be having some cognition problems since I started the lithium. Even after the fuzziness faded, for the most part, once I got used to the meds, I still had memory problems. They weren't as bad as when I was on the effexor, but they are still there. I really can't remember names at all. I blank on movie titles and the names of actors. I'll have a word on the tip of my tongue, I can even see the object or person in my head, but I can't remember the name of it. It took me two weeks of mulling it over in the back of my mind to remember that it's the lead singer of OH FUCK I can't remember it now. So yeah, it sucks. And if I had to do this while taking a class with a good deal of memorization, like either of my art history courses, I'd be completely screwed. Guess taking any foreign language classes are out now.

But what is probably even more troubling to me is that I seem to have lost some of my ability to make connections between ideas. I keep telling people that this medicine made my IQ drop 20 points. Everyone seems to kinda laugh this off, but it is genuinely how I feel. I have a difficult time making the connections needed to understand some Newsweek articles. I keep thinking of my Rhetoric class, reading Foucault and having that light bulb moment. There's no way I could even understand Foucault now. I couldn't even read the text, much less make the needed connections. And I can't seem to get any fiction writing started. Even when I think I have an idea to start with, I can't come up with what follows. It sucks.

I once saw an interview with the author of a (non-fiction) book about the connections between bipolar disorder and genuis in creative/artistic pursuits. In laying out her case in the book, she brought up several great artists who, though undiagnosed in thier lifetimes, usually because there was no such thing as a bipolar disorder diagnosis, have reportedly displayed symptoms common to bipolar disease. She also studied several living artists with a documented history of bipolar disorder. It's interesting to wonder if what helps make one an artistic genius, or even just creative, also makes one bipolar.

Now, I'm not disgnosed as bipolar, but I am on a combination of drugs typically prescribed to bipolar people. I also don't think I'm going to create some great masterpiece. But I still wonder about the "is it worth it" question. If we had these drugs then, do you think it would have been better for Van Gogh to have his mental illness under control if it meant he never produced Starry Night or any of his other masterpieces? Do you think he'd have taken the medication if it meant he wouldn't paint? The same question could be asked about so many people now famous for their artistic endeavors. Hell, even about non-artists. Someone, maybe even the author I wrote about above, said that Winston Churchill was probably bipolar. Can you imagine how different history might have been if Churchill was on lithium, instead of just self-medicating with alcohol?

I'm not really looking for any concrete answers. I'm not going to run off to my doctor to ask for a med change. And I'm certainly not going to just stop any medication. All that said, I still would love your thoughts and opinions.

I Don't Want to be a Zombie

2009-04-26T06:56:00.000-05:00

When making the initial decision about whether or not to begin taking psychiatric drugs, I was scared to death, afraid I’d end up a drugged out zombie. While there are tons of unflattering portrayals of people on psychiatric drugs and psychiatric drugs themselves from movies, television, and literature that I could choose from, the one I kept coming to was a character in Anne Rice’s “The Witching Hour.” In the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to Deirdre Mayfair, who turns out to be the biological mother of the main character. She has been put on heavy psychiatric drugs for several decades, by the order of her family. She opens her eyes, but that is the full extent to which she interacts with the outside world. I felt that I would rather die than end up like Deirdre Mayfair, even if it was what was “best” for me and my loved ones.

Of course, that was an extreme worry, especially when we were only talking about putting me on an SSRI anti-depressant. As long as I’ve been on the “right” anti-depressant, I’ve had no large problems. Of course, even then, there was a certain amount of tinkering going on to get the “right” anti-depressant…but I did not have the kind of issues I was worried about before I started taking them.

The same cannot be said, however, of adding other drugs to the regiment, as any loyal reader knows. The lithium has proved to have a longer and more difficult adjustment period and I’m still sorting through and dealing with the side effects of it. And I’ve been thinking a great deal about when it stops being worth it, when you should change meds, things like that. Do you have to act like something out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for it to be too much? What if the meds just interfere so much that you can’t function like a real person, can’t get/keep a job? I’m not thinking of changing meds now, but I’d like to share the side effects I’m dealing with now, some minor but annoying and others that I feel are interfering or could interfere. I’m sharing the side effects so that those who don’t have experience on psychiatric drugs can see what it is like and, for those of you who do have that experience, maybe I can get some advice. I would also love to hear anyone’s thoughts on when those side effects would be too much for you.

Ok, so there are still basic general things that are still going on that I’ve written about before. I’m not going to grow my hair out again because it got so gross and was falling out after I started taking the lithium. I still have the “can’t feel my stomach” phenomenon, which is only slightly annoying. I had hoped that it would help me curb my eating, but it actually hurt it. I tend to eat with my eyes, eat comfort food and junk food, and I don’t know when to stop eating until I’m about to puke. I’ve also lost my taste for chocolate, unless it is in ice cream/shake form, trading it in for a craving for salty and greasy food and gummy candy.

Something I didn’t connect to the lithium until recently, and in all reality could really be a side effect of my birth control implant, is the acne I’ve been experiencing. Not to be too gross about it, but I have been getting clusters of acne that don’t turn into whiteheads and don’t heal. They end up looking like large red areas on my face. Many of these are along my chin line. I’ve also felt them in my hair, but I can’t see those so much. I didn’t have the clearest skin before but they were usually individual whiteheads in the T-zone which cleared up rather easily. I also have problem areas on my body, which don’t seem to be clearing up at all. When I saw that this wasn’t going away, I became diligent about washing my face twice a day. When that didn’t do it, I bought an acne fighting moisturizer. I’ve now moved on to a trio of acne controllers sold together. It’s only been a couple of days. We’ll see how it goes. But I hate being in my mid-20s and having to fight acne this hard, when it doesn’t seem like it is working. I know it sounds shallow to worry about this, but it does interfere in my life. I don’t want to face people during job interviews, when doing things for the organization I volunteer with, or in other social settings with these hideous red spots on my face. I don’t want to take pictures, even to commemorate an occasion. And I’m even more nervous when I wear make-up to “hide” the blemish, as I’m always afraid that it just makes the blemish stand out more. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this new regime works.

Another thing that I hadn’t noticed a lot until recently, though it also seems shallow, is the effect of the drug on my sex drive. It’s complicated to explain, so please bear with me. It’s not that I don’t want sex. It is also not that I don’t enjoy sex when I have it. But I don’t seek it out and I don’t initiate it. It’s been months since I’ve been to Craigslist looking for some strange. I suppose, on the one hand, it’s a good thing for me. It has smoothed out a good deal of my compulsive sexual tendencies and I know several people who would say that is a good thing. But, on the other hand, it might be contributing to the lack of physical relationship between Obsedian and I, as if I didn’t have a hard enough time initiating sex with other women. It could also create problems if/when I start a relationship with someone who isn’t as sexually aggressive and comfortable initiating the sex as TyRoy. I have always felt, and still do feel, like sexual contact is an important part of any intimate romantic relationship. I never wanted to be “that girl,” the one who didn’t have sex with her man, who wasn’t GGG with her partner, who was experiencing “lesbian bed death” with her girlfriend. But maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about becoming that woman. Even though I might not actually initiate the sex, I do try to think of things TyRoy might like, wear panty hose and high heels for no reason other than to arouse his sexual interest, though I think most women, me included, just have to smile at him to get him aroused. And, though I still haven’t been able to push myself on her, I have developed a good way to get to see Obsedian more often, in private, and late at night. Now I just have to have the balls to act.

Last but not least, we have the tremor, which I’ve written about before. The doctor put me on a beta blocker, propranolol, which is typically used to control blood pressure. I take a very small amount and we end up bumping it up everytime I go to see him. It was working ok, though I was having a hell of a time trying to remember to take the middle of the day pill. Then, about a week and a half ago, the tremor started bothering me again. Mostly it’s just been the benign shaking that only I notice. I’ve also had a couple of twitches in my body. None of that was too major though. But then Friday morning I had an episode of bad shaking and that fuzzy feeling that I thought I had left behind once I got adjusted to the meds. I really detest that fuzzy feeling. I was glad when it seemed to disappear, as I knew I probably couldn’t work or function like a normal person while having that feeling. I started to feel better after some sleep, though the tremor is still bugging me.

Ok guys. So there it is. Tell me your thoughts.

Irreversible

2009-04-15T03:22:00.001-05:00

***Spoiler Alert****
***Trigger Alert****

Just watched the movie Irreversible. Now, I kind knew going in what the movie was about. When it came to American theaters in 2003, it was pretty controversial for two especially brutal scenes, one of a murder and one of a sexual and physical assault. It was also told in a “reverse” manner, somewhat like the movie Momento.

What I’m writing now is just my first impressions after having just watched the movie, without the aid of any recently read reviews or commentaries of the movie. I’m also probably not going to be able to make any arguments that will stand up to scrutiny, but it is just what is in my head about the movie.

From the start, I was struck by the all the homophobic language. As cops lead a man on a gurney and then a handcuffed man out of a bar called Rectum, homophobic slurs and commentary are hurled at the two men. In the next scene, which happened before the first, the audience first sees all kinds of sexual activity going on in a dimly lit “backroom” area, both solo and man on man, where most of the men are in leather. Now, I’ve never been to any sex clubs, let alone a sex club exclusively for gay men, but I am not sure I believe that places like this even exist. I have been to gay bars, even gay leather bars where I was just about the only woman there, and I’ve never seen anything like these places featured in movies and television shows where gay men go to have all kinds of sex. So, anyway, there are several minutes of “lurid” gay sex. Then the man on the gurney shows up and starts asking everyone if they know a man called Tiena. The guy who was arrested in the previous scene is trying to get the guy from the gurney to leave, to stop whatever he’s doing. And if you didn’t know from a movie synopsis before you started watching the movie, you’ll find out in a scene or two that these guys are looking for the guy who raped someone they know (gurney guy’s girlfriend). Let me repeat that: They’re looking for a guy who raped a girl in a gay club/bar/sex club. In the process, gurney guy throws out “faggot,” “cocksucker”, etc, slaps around a guy, and then he tries to beat up the guy he thinks raped his girl. When that guy overpowers him, the arrested guy gets in the fray, first to defend gurney guy, then just letting out all the anger he must feel as the sensitive, thinking-too-much guy he’s shown to be later in the movie. So in the second reverse chronological scene, we’re shown the “deviant” sex backroom and then the straight guys beat up one guy and kill another guy, presumably both gay men, in an all gay club. Now, despite how bad I feel rape is, and how willing I am to punish a rapist as severely as possible, as an LGBT person, I was sickened to think that a place where a gay man might go to feel safe and express his sexuality around other like-minded men would be a turned into a place of violence against them by two straight men.

Then, as the movie proceeded, there are several more scenes were the victim, the woman they are supposed to be getting revenge for, Alex, is mentioned, but not seen. For awhile, it was starting to seem like this movie was more about their sense of vengeance than about the victim. Probably the first third of the movie is taken up with Gurney Guy seeking first a witness to the crime, then the club where the witness has told him the perpetrator is hanging out. During this, Gurney Guy assaults a prostitute and threatens to cut her and uses derogatory language to and about an Asian taxi driver, then assaulting him and stealing his cab. What a good boyfriend. Arrested Guy pleads with him to stop, to go see Alex at the hospital, all to no avail. When watching those scenes, I thought that it might be nice for them to go see the woman, but, during that first watching, one doesn’t know how much time has passed. I figured they already knew she was stable. No, you later find out that this is happening just after the police left the scene of the crime. They have not been to the hospital at all before running off to get revenge. Also, isn’t it the victim who is entitled to her revenge? If she died, then maybe it should all fall on their shoulders. But she was the victim of the crime. If anyone is going to get blood for blood, shouldn’t it be her? It just feels like this is taking away all her agency.

The first time we see Alex is when she is being put into the ambulance. She is all blood and dark hair. Just before this, a bystander, when asked what the police are doing there, replies that some whore got raped. When Gurney Guy sees her and starts wailing over her, he calls her his girl. So far Alex is – a rape victim, a whore, and Gurney Guy’s girl. It is her rape that has supposedly driven the story so far, but she isn’t even really a person at this point.

Then the next scene is the scene in which she is raped. She is wearing a very slinky dress and using the underground tunnel to get to the other side of the busy, multi-lane street, to the side where all the taxis are. (And, of course, she is told in an earlier chronologically, seen later scene not to go alone because it is too dangerous.) There is a lengthy brutal rape scene. Very length, very brutal. After the man is done raping her, he then kicks and punches her in the face, saying that he wants to ruin her beautiful face. There is also quite a bit of class issues in it, as he calls her a rich bitch several times, seems to resent her class, or perceived class. We also find out that the man who raped her is also implied to be the pimp of the transgendered prostitute Gurney Guy roughed up earlier in the movie. When raping Alex, he says several times that he does not usually like “cunts.” Does it disturb anyone that the straight guys are the (anti-) heroes for an agent-less woman raped by a gay man?

It is at this point in the movie that I had this thought: If you lived in a country where everyone was white, how would you know who to be scared of when walking alone at night? That’s not exactly what I mean. In American movies or television, there are certain stereotypes of people we should be afraid of. This is a reflection of who we think we should be afraid of in real everyday. These people are almost always male, marked by their clothing as poor or working class (like they aren’t wearing suits), more often than not black or Hispanic, blah blah blah. I’ve read several articles written by middle and upper class people of color who were suspected of shoplifting or being up to no good just because of the color of their skin. But I wonder who white people are supposed to be afraid of when there are no people of color around? I grant this isn’t the actual reality of any European country today and that immigrants in France are face discrimination, but it still made me wonder. It also just reinforced how stupid those stereotypes are, that my parents lost more to the banksters out of their 401Ks than they would lose to a mugger on any given day, and that most rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows personally, not strangers like in this movie.

The rest of the movie is why she left the party before either of the men and flushing out the relationships between the three. It ends in a bright park, with children playing, on a kinda cheery note, like the movie puts back together everything that was broken by the end. I guess that’s a more interesting way of ending the film. It also lets people who’ve seen something pretty disturbing leave the theater feeling good instead of like they want to shoot themselves, which happens way more often in movies like this. Also, it goes from dark and “depraved” and violent to bright and happy and loving.

But I have to say I’m still deeply troubled…….

Sometimes I Feel Like I Can't Do Anything Right

2009-04-09T03:58:00.002-05:00

Even when I am doing better, it still feels like it is never enough. As I said in my last post, I am frustrated and disappointed with how my job search is going, or not going as the case may be, and with how little I'm actually doing currently for the places that I have tried to volunteer with. Thankfully, I was able to be more productive for my household, but it still doesn't feel like enough. When a person's largest problem is that they don't don't feel like they are worthwhile or contribute to society on the whole, it doesn't help that person to actually not be able to contribute in a positive way to their own livelyhood.

Another recent development that hasn't really helped me is that I've started going through a decent amount of pain for a frustrating percentage of my time. I'm not really sure why this is either. In high school, I started seeing a chiropractor after prolonged back and neck pain and limited upper body mobility that my general practicioner didn't really think was anything at all. It is the chiropractor's opinion (and mine) that my back and neck pain are probably a result of a car accident when I was 12. I see him on an irregular basis, when I have an issue. I have, at different times, experienced nagging leg pain, what I imagine restless leg syndrome feels like. It usually only bothers me when I lay down to sleep. Stretching gives me temporary relief. At my most recent physical in July when I was having this problem, the doctor's nurse told me that it was a vitamin deficiency and to start regularly taking a multi-vitamin. This in combination with a trip to the chiropractor stopped the pain. For awhile at least. I had to stop the multi-vitamin about a month in because it had iron and iron causes me to have horrible heavy periods. I should have looked for another but it is very hard to find a multi-vitamin without iron. And I mostly didn't have any more problems with it until last month. Maybe one night here and there, but nothing like this. The nagging pain has started to bother me when I am sitting as well as when I lay down to sleep. It makes me want to move, to stretch out farther in bed, to shift position, which makes me not a great person to sleep in the same bed with or to even sit on the couch with sometimes. And the pain has started to spread to my forearms. I've been taking ibeprophen every 6 hours. I went to the chiropractor two weeks ago. It helped for a couple days, but then came back. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm not sure if it is the result of back problems and nerve pinching. And I can't really afford to go to... well, any doctor to explore what it could be. But it sure makes sleeping and functioning even less fun that it was before. I'm kinda screwed all the way around.

Then there is the latest bit of drama. BT's ex gf, the one he was with after he left me, sent me a message on myspace to apologize for everything. I responded, thanking her, telling her that, though she said she didn't believe anything he had said about he and I, I had a hand in the end of the relationship, that I wasn't innocent, and that I didn't wish her ill, as there was enough blame to go around. I also told BT that she had contacted me, giving him the gist of the conversation but not copying it, because I didn't want him to find out through her or any mutual friends of theirs and be upset that I hadn't told him. I am really trying hard to be civil and friendly with him. She replied with some info about their relationship that I hadn't asked for, though it had to do with some legal issues I knew they were having that I really don't want to be a part of. That's when I heard from BT- he wanted a copy of the messages to use in the legal wranglings, despite my saying that they weren't going to help him. While he didn't get angry, as far as I could tell, he did REALLY want me to give them to him. When I let her know about his request, including the fact that I had told him to have his JAG lawyer call me or get a court order, she got mad at me for ever having told him about her messaging me. So, in a petty moment, I said fuck it to myself and sent it on to him. There was a moment in there when I felt like maybe I wasn't going to be the hated pariah in this whole situation. Maybe my ex-husband wouldn't hate me and we could at least be civil, even if we couldn't be friends, and I wouldn't feel like the woman he got with after me, who no doubt heard lots of bad things about me and felt all kinds of bad things about me, many because she felt that I had hurt the man she loved, doesn't hate me. Guess not.

Fuck. I really wish I could drink without a blindingly painful hangover, because getting really drunk is about all I can come up with right now.

Disappointment

2009-04-04T23:13:00.002-05:00

*Sigh* I started the week before last pretty excited. Joblessness has been getting me down lately, but I got some advice that pushed me to go ahead and start purueing volunteer opportunities, then adjust my scheduling if/when I got a job. I decided on signing up to volunteer with an animal shelter (the same one where I got my older cat) and the metro LGBT community center. All the while, I would continue to do work for my folks and apply for jobs, including jobs I might not normally apply for.

Well, two weeks later and I'm pretty much nowhere. Which is where I started. So at least I didn't move backwards.

I filled out the application to volunteer at the animal shelter Monday before last. I still haven't heard from them. I checked out the website and it said that, because they have a large number of people who want to volunteer, it often takes 2-3 weeks for them to get back to anyone. Selfishly, I was hoping to be able to fill some time up sooner.

In what I thought was a good sign, I heard back from someone at the LGBT community center the day after I sent them an email and was invited to join their membership committee meeting last Sunday. It was a great meeting and I felt energized and hopeful. I was only supposed to contact two other LGBT groups, go to one of their meetings, and tell them about our upcoming activities. The one group doesn't meet for a few weeks, but going to talk to the other group is more complicated. I took the women's football team during our meeting and it was suggested that I ask if I could come speak to them just before a practice. I never heard back from them. I also didn't hear back from the committee's leader, who had said he would provide talking points when we went to talk to these groups. Last Sunday, we had a specific event that we were supposed to be promoting, which was supposed to happen next Saturday. It has now disappeared from the website. I sent another email but it isn't looking so good....

I'm still applying for jobs. I even applied to a few housekeeping jobs. And one of them sent me an email back saying that they were going with more qualified applicants. I know, I know, I know. This means that they are looking at candidates who have previous housekeeping exprience. But what I read was that I'm not even qualified to be a housekeeper. Ever feel like you'll never find a job? Then, you start to look back at times where you messed up on jobs, and you start to think that you don't deserve a job. Today Mom said that they don't call it a "down" economy just because all those numbers are down. It's the people that are down too. In my head, I keep imagining our cities and towns turning into those dark, dirty, scary places of late-1970s and 1980s indie movies. I watched Repo Man last week. Wow....... That movie is crazy.

Helping around the house was going well, but health issues have derailed that the last half week or so. Sorry if this is TMI but- Well, my period started up today, so I'm guessing that my need to sleep for 18 hours a day was some lovely PMS. So I haven't gotten out to do the shopping that I was supposed to do for my folks and we don't have alot of food around right now. But I did manage to be awake to go with my mom to her eye appointment today, as she was worried they would dilate her eyes and she didn't want to drive herself home. Yay me!

Lastly, there's the love life. Meh. What love life? My regular lover has been out of town for work and, when home, too tired and overloaded to hang out. And my other dating relationship seems to be at a standstill. Partly because of lack of privacy, also because of a lack of sexual aggression on both our parts, and well other stuff. I don't want to push anything and I really don't think either of us know exactly what we want so it's kinda just where it's at.

So, no lovin', no job, and no selfish selflessness. Let's hope next week is better.

Economic Paradigms

2009-03-28T23:49:00.003-05:00

Before I jump on my soapbox, I’d like to beg your forgiveness. While I’m not sure that I could have made this all make sense when I was at my best, I am really afraid that this might be incomprehensible, as it seems like my IQ has dropped 20 points since I started this medicine, but I feel like I need to try to get it out anyway, whether or not it makes any sense or any difference.

Next, I should say that I don’t understand the economy. I’ve never really wanted to. I’ve never taken a class on it, or even read a book on it. I have an IRA that I don’t pay attention to that I got from my high school graduation. But I do have a love-hate relationship with politics and news, so it is hard to avoid economics these days. And I know, generally, what each side is fighting for and against, the principles and theories that each side says is guiding them. But I can’t claim to have any idea what is best.

But it isn’t just a lack of education and understanding of economics that prevent me from feeling like I can claim what option is “best.” It is that there is also the question of “What is BEST for what and for whom?” For someone who holds the belief that the country is best as a strictly capitalist economic structure (which it hasn’t been for a long time, but whatever), then they would think that it would be a necessary evil for people and corporations that couldn’t hack it to go under, for the country to go through more economic strife if it meant maintaining and/or reasserting a strict capitalist structure. Most of these people think that capitalism is best for the general good, that capitalism provides the best opportunity for innovation, for people to rise through the work force, for individual and group liberty, etc. And many also believe that it is what is best for them. Even if they aren’t rich now, they still think they could be rich, could run a successful company that they don’t want heavily regulated, and that they don’t want to give more of their money to the government in the form of taxes. This goes for every theory. The theory that a person or group prefers benefits them in some way, just as it also benefits the greater good. I used capitalism as an example, but it is true of all these theories and, also, it is almost impossible to follow one of these economic or political-economic theories completely. There’s always a mix of something else in there too.

But I guess what’s been bugging me lately is the attitude around me. “Both my parents taught me about goodwill and I have done well by their names.”-Ani. We’ve never had a ton, though we’ve never wanted, but my family always encouraged the idea of spreading it around. I remember my stepdad inviting guys he worked with over for Thanksgiving when they didn’t have family nearby to spend the holiday with. This Christmas, I overheard him in the other room telling someone about how all the guys he worked with pitched in to get the poorest among them proper clothing to shovel show in. It was all second-hand work gloves and boots, but it made all the difference to him. So, how can this same man unsympathetically advocate throwing people on the streets if they face foreclosure, without any recognition that some people were tricked into ARMs or the simple economic fact that it would be net a lender more to change the terms of the mortgage than just foreclose? Who calls those to use government help, not just welfare but even unemployment benefits, bums? Who doesn’t want to pay more in taxes, to have less personally, because he says that, even if it were to JUST go to create more jobs, those jobs would only go to the same old people, not actually employ those who are currently unemployed? I could go on, but it’s depressing.

But the fucked up thing is that, if I present a specific example, he usually agrees with me, has a more compassionate stance, based on the reality of the situation. When I asked him if I was a bum, as I’m currently living off of him and my mother, he said that I wasn’t a bum, that I was just going through a difficult time, but that it was different because I was relying on family. When I pointed out that, if for example I went on disability for one reason or another, I would be taking money that I had paid in on my paychecks, which is also what unemployment benefits are. These things are part of why we pay taxes. When I asked him if he didn’t think that the government should take taxes that go to public education, he said that he thought that was ok. So, he obviously doesn’t think that the government shouldn’t do anything. Or he at least believes that there is not a current privately funded system to do those things for us. But the big picture answer stays the same. No higher taxes. Let companies and corporations fail. Let us go through what we’ll go through, as a country.

One of the high-profile liberal bloggers that I read regularly, John Arvosis, recently wrote about how tired he personally is of the sob stories surrounding home foreclosures, especially as he’s worked hard, sacrificed, and maintained his payments on a condo he bought after saving a sizable down payment and doing his homework on loan terms and interest rates. His biggest point is that he might care about home foreclosures if the news stories he read didn’t use people who did stupid things or were planning on flipping the house for more than they originally paid as examples, but instead showed real people that had been taken advantage of by fast-talking, misleading mortgage brokers. While John got a lot of flack from commentors, a few did share their personal stories of being mislead or outright lied to, while others pointed to stories in their local paper or on their local news stations that highlights real people who had been mislead or lied to about the terms of their loans.

To me, the lesson seems to be that when one gets down to specific examples, to the level of the individual, the story can often change. One part of me things that this means that the best way is to bring up a specific real life example of an individual to sway someone who might only be thinking of themselves or sticking to their larger economic and political views, rather than the good of those currently less fortunate, along with the reminder that they could be that less fortunate person at any time. An example of this might be to talk about the real life person I know who was just laid off from his job at a small company that didn’t have to give him any notice during which he could look for another job and doesn’t currently have much saving because he just paid for the burial of his son. If he doesn’t take the unemployment benefits, which he has been paying into all of his working life, he and his working wife could lose their home and cars while he is looking for a job. There is no reason this man shouldn’t take the benefits available to him and he is not a bad person for making use of this safety net, which seems to me like a mass savings account. And I do think that this might be able to sway the person, get them to agree with you in the moment, maybe even make them change their idea on a vote, but I’m not sure it’ll make any long term difference. I suppose as I think about the larger liberal movement and also all the –ism movements that I follow, the real argument needs to be about everyone, what rules and rights and privileges should be afforded to everyone, not just a few, based on what one thinks a human is entitled to from their government and from other people. For example, saying that no recently unemployed person who is eligible for unemployment benefits under the current law should be denied them, have it made difficult to get them, nor should they feel a stigma attached to taking a security net benefit that they have been contributing to for the duration of their working lives. Unfortunately, that broader argument is going to be more difficult to sway someone on, as they already have their own view of what a human is entitled to. So I’m not really sure how to answer this or fix any of this, except to share it with others, knowing most people won’t change their mind.

I’ll leave you with another Ani song. I guess I paid attention to it for the first time tonight when she was playing on PBS. It highlights what I feel right now, the difference in my head and my stepdad’s head between what is right and what is wrong in this situation, when I learned a good deal about helping others from him.

Sorry, it's sideways. What do you expect from youtube?

Paradigm - Ani DiFranco
I was born to two immigrants
Who knew why they were here
They were happy to pay taxes
For the schools and roads
Happy to be here
They took it seriously
The second job of citizenry
My mother went campaigning door to door
And holding to her hand was me
I was just a girl in a room full of women
Licking stamps and laughing
I remember the feeling of community brewing
Of democracy happening

But I suppose like anybody
I had to teach myself to see
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to church
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to school
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to the house of my family
All that stuff that was not lost on me

Teach myself to see each of us
Through the lens of forgiveness
Like we're stuck with each other (god forbid!)
Teach myself to smile and stop and talk
To a whole other color kid
Teach myself to be new in an instant
Like the truth is accessible at any time
Teach myself it's never really one or the other
There's a paradox in every paradigm

I was just a girl in a room full of women
Licking stamps and laughing
I remember the feeling of community brewing
Of democracy happening

Update to "More freewrite..."

2009-03-18T22:32:00.001-05:00

This is what BT posted as a comment to this post on Myspace:

All that I wanted was to let yo know that I still think about you, still
care about you, and still worry about you. I am very sorry if all that upsets
you, so do not fear, I will be gone from Kansas in about 3 months, back to
active duty, and another state, and hopefully back to Iraq. I am very sorry if
my calling you upset you, but something inside me told me to call you, and you
know that I always follow those instincts. But you may rest easy, as you just
said, you are not sure you want us to remain friends, so I will not contact you
again, and if you wish, my phone will always be on for you, as I do still care
for you.Goodbye Ava

So I don't know what to write or say to that. It seems to be to just be more "woe is me" without ever taking credit for anything or asking what one could do to make it better. What fucking bullshit. You know, no one makes me want to hurt myself like him....

And SERIOUSLY- you care about me??? Where was all this caring when you left me less than a week after I got out of the hospital and promptly moved another woman into your place? Where was that caring when you demanded that I do all the work for a divorce and beg my parents for money so that I could pay for it, so that you could marry that woman, so that her and her children could get your military benefits when you re-deployed, despite all your claims of horrendous PTSD? Caring is about what you actually DO, all the time, not just a phone call here and there, not just words that don't mean anything when not backed up by actions, and not just when the newest crazy bitch allows you to talk to your female friends and exes. And I fully allow that you can and probably should hate me forever for what I did to you. That's why I left you alone once I got that you were really gone, except to talk about the real issues of the divorce. But you don't seem to want to allow me to have my pain over what happened. AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! "They say time heals everything but I'm still waiting."

More freewriting than writing...

2009-03-18T18:17:00.000-05:00

Can't sleep because of my "restless leg syndrome". Ok, so it probably isn't that but I don't know what the hell to call it and it sure as hell feels like what the commercials describe. Keep thinking that I should have stolen some of my Gram's meds for RLS when I was visiting last week. And a few Vicoden while I was at it.

Laying here wondering why you called me. St Patty's Day. You were between bars. I can't deny that a part of me envies those who can and do go out to bars, drink, smoke, have a good time, though I also have to admit that I wasn't that wild when I was drinking, mostly due to a lack of designated drivers. But I think I kinda rained on your parade when you called. I didn't have much to say, no recent good news in my life, and I wasn't happy and drunk myself.

But I'm not sure what you expect to hear. I don't exactly feel comfortable telling you about seeing and fucking my ex-bf while I was out of town visiting my grandmother, the one who really dislikes you, the one who just got out of jail and still owes me money that I got from you. And I know you don't want to hear about the only consistent friendship and bed partner that I do have, a man you despise and think stole me from you, among other crimes. And you've known that for the past couple of weeks I've been too depressed to really do much of anything, including hang out with most of my other friends or do anything constructive, like get a fucking job. Thankfully, just the driving and singing of my road trip helped that some, but.... I don't really feel like you want to hear about me being happy. Hell, I didn't feel like hearing you all happy-drunk, especially because of issues that were between us about alcohol. Not that I begrudge you happiness, but I just wish it felt like it was a little more real and lasting, instead of something that can only fuel more drama in your life.

The day before this call, while sitting at a red light, the driver of the car next to me lit up a cigarette. The weater was beautiful and we both had our windows down. I caught a long, lingering whiff of her cigarette smoke before the light changed. It reminded me of you. One might think that, after a childhood living with my grandparents who both smoked like chimnees, I would associate the smell of cigarette smoke with them. And I guess I do, but I usually associate them with the smell of stale, lingering cigarette smoke in a too-small room. But fresh cigarette smoke..... Hell, if it wasn't for the interest of another man, memories of you might have ruined my experience at a day-before-Valentine's-Day party. One of the other players at my Spin The Bottle table was a smoker. He tasted like you. Hell, he even kissed kinda like you. And a Juggalo to boot.

So I'm still wondering what you expected when you called last night. I guess I just think it is all a little too soon for all this. Even if I wanted to remain friends with you, which I'm honestly not sure I do want to, because it hurts to fucking much still, I'm not sure I'm in a place to do that. When people are friends with their exes, they usually end up trying to get back together. Unless they have significant others at the time, in which case they just cheat. The prime example being my ex-bf I just saw and all your ex-gfs who crawled out of the woodwork once you were married and gainfully employed. Just don't know what the fuck you wanted or expected. Not sure any answer will actually make me sleep any better.....

Minefields

2009-03-05T23:01:00.001-06:00

I don’t tend to “date”, as such. Until the past two years or so, I would get deep into a relationship early on, usually before the previous relationship ended, and stay in that relationship long-term, until the next one came along. For all that practice at relationships, one would think that I might have gotten good at it, but that was not the case. But at least I had experience in that. I didn’t have experience at the whole dating thing.

Actually, I don’t think I really do have much experience with the whole dating thing. After the confidence boost and push to control my own sexuality that MP gave me, I hopped around a bit, but I wouldn’t call that “dating” either. There was a “date,” meaning there was a meeting in a public place, usually for a meal, so we could scope each other out, then there was usually sex. Basic sex in a box set-up. Most guys tended to come back, as I was discreet and not clingy after the sex. Guys don’t usually pass up free sex. A few guys either just disappeared or faded away, some of them I’d slept with, some of them we didn’t get the chance. Some of them I developed a modicum of friendship with, and I usually paid them the courtesy of a message here and there, at least let them know when I stopped being interested in fooling around. But for the most part, everyone knew what was what and, while I was sometimes disappointed when someone would just disappear, I accepted that was what it was and just let it be. No calls or emails. While explanations are always appreciated, they don’t owe me one and, really, I don’t owe them one.

But “dating” is different. It’s all bullshit and calculation and façade, even when one attempts to really be real. I’m not the most social of people. I’m ok once I get to know people and can usually come off well with small groups of people. But I don’t really like doing it for very long. It’s too much work. Hell, sometimes even people I know, people I’m close with, are too much work. I remember how relieved I was to get to just BE, be myself, be nothing, with TyRoy after a four-hour car ride with my grandmother. You know, that might be a good simile for dating: Dates with new(-ish) people are like a long car ride with my grandmother, only I know where I shouldn’t step with my grandmother. Dates are wholly new minefields.

But we brave the minefields because sometimes the treasures we find in the fields and on the other side of the fields are ones that complement our own. But I think we can always find treasures there. Also, I guess the sex in the box relationships, the dating relationships, and the LTRelationships all present different minefields. I’m just more comfortable navigating the sex in the box and LTRelationships. But back in December, knowing that I didn’t really want to bed hop as hosting is rather uncomfortable for me right now and the meds somewhat alter my sex drive, and knowing that I wanted a LTRelationship, eventually, though probably not completely monogamous and I wouldn’t want to jump right in, so I started “dating.” I don’t think I’ve been what one would term successful.

I think the most successful I’ve been is more in developing a friendship that may never become physical with the woman I’ve been dating. In my experience, dating or even just fooling around with women, especially, usually, more femme women, there’s a problem getting the physical aspect going. I’m really just not that sexually aggressive. Also, I know what it’s like to have someone who is too sexually aggressive be all over me, making me uncomfortable, but be too stupid to get my hints for them to back off. I don’t want to be that person. And currently we both have issues hosting the other. But I really do enjoy her company. She is one of the few women that I know who really gets and agrees with my non-monogamy. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband is very very much like my own ex-husband. Blah blah blah. You get the picture. We get each other. And I think we are both pretty much ok with not labeling or limiting what we are or aren’t to each other.

Now, I’ve had less luck with the boys. Things just not fitting. Not bad guys, though. Now I’m trying to navigate that part of the minefield I had only really seen in sitcoms and romantic comedies. You know, I’m not really sure if it has a title. It’s not really a “break-up” because you were never together as a couple. Calling it “the brush-off” sounds mean, but it might be the most accurate. In LTRelationships, I’m used to the drama-filled break-up with someone you still love very much and who still loves you and the gradual process of trying to become friends, because you both know each other in very close, intimate ways. And, with the sex in the box, as I wrote above, you accepted that no one owed anyone anything, and just let it be.

But ending a “dating” relationship, especially early on, is different. I’m probably putting way too much thought into this, though. I went on a couple dates around the beginning of the year with a guy I was sorta interested in, but we had a couple weeks where our plans fell through and we didn’t really communicate very much, then he kinda disappeared. I sent a text or two, saying hi and asking if he wanted to hang out. When I got no answer I stopped. No need to stalk, right? Now, I have absolutely no idea why he stopped communicating with me. But I would guess that he didn’t struggle for days with if he should stop seeing me and how he should do it. I’m not saying he wasn’t a good guy who didn’t appreciate my company. But I really doubt it.

I, on the other hand, spent days thinking about how to end things with someone that I had a few dates with recently. [NB: I probably sound like a completely patronizing ass, especially if he happens to read this, but I can only write from my side and to get across the point I am attempting to make. Sorry if I step on any toes. But, then again, everyone I date knows about my blog so….) For the most part, I don’t think two people are ever equally interested in each other at any given time. It might be close but it’s never equal. And when you are in a situation where you just don’t fit, where you just aren’t “feelin’ it,” but the other person did nothing wrong, I don’t see any reason not to at least try to minimize any hurt feelings. This is even more true if you think that the other person is already more invested in the relationship than you are. But, on the other hand, it isn’t fair to anyone to continue when you know it isn’t going anywhere, especially not where they want it to go.

Grrrr….. But I’m still so torn. Do most people have this same dilemma? Is it different for men and women, generally? Do men and women prefer different methods, namely does one gender prefer to be disappeared on vs. getting as nice and civil of an explanation as one can honestly give them? And do most people put more thought into one or the other? Is there a possibility that the guy I was dating around New Year’s really thought about it long and hard before he stopped returning my text messages? This shit is too fucking hard. Not sure I’m up for this stupid shit right now. I have loving friends, and I get sex regularly at this time, so I think I’ll just let a LTR find me, if it’s going to. And keep a first aid kit handy, in case I stumble upon any more minefields I want to walk through.