They say "The 1st Year Is the Hardest"

Saturday will be the one year anniversary of your death. I'll go back to your home to celebrate your life with a bonfire and free flowing alcohol with your partner, your neighbors, and a few other select people you loved. Of course, without you to unite everyone and quash bad blood, not everyone I wish could be there will be. You were amazing at bringing people together, making families and friendships where there might not have even been acquaintanceships. Even within our own family, your level-headedness and ability to empathize with even the most different person kept us together. When I wanted to be a sullen, anti-social teenager, you never stopped shepparding me back into the fold.

More often than not, my family strife came from my step-father and I's inability to effectively communicate. But your knowledge of all of the players in the situation, your ability to find just the right way to tell me how to get my head out of my ass, and your spot-on advice on what would work best for me to fix what I'd done wrong while, if possible, getting what I wanted... well, it saved me. Saved us.

Selfishly, all I can think of is how much I need you now for this. Before you passed, my lack of paid employment had a reason. I was taking care of you. Then, I got some slack to grieve. But Mom went back to work right away. Even after 3 months and a grieving support group, I couldn't run a simple errand without crying. The months of therapy since have mostly helped contain that, but they've also helped me develop all these coping skills. Or at least that's how I feel. I've tried to make up for what I lack in cooking ability and having paid employment with trying to do as much of the cleaning as possible, with running errands, with doing all the laundry, and with trying not to pick or be drawn into fights about politics with my step-dad. But apparently he still thinks I'm a hysterical shrieking harpy who's mood changes faster than the weather in our Midsized Midwestern City. Finally, yesterday, I snapped, which only served to prove him right, at least in his eyes.

I know I should have sat down and really analyzed the skill that I could use best in this situation, written down step by step what I was going to present as the issue(s.) I should have had fucking multi-colored 3x5 cards. And I should have taken a magical pill that would prevent me from crying when I got mad or upset or sad and that forced me to keep eye contact, instead of looking down at the floor to catch my thoughts. But I didn't. And I lost. Leaving for the night to get some space on the issue turned into me running away. Asking him to say something or listen at all, even after he himself said he didn't like that there was no communication in the household, was me trying to change him and he's just not going to change. The real problem is that I just feel too much, think too much, and want too much. In my therapy, we call this invalidating, and, as you can probably guess, it's not a positive term.

The homework my therapist gave me was to do the thinking-work and paper-work with the skills I should have used, so I can have a better grasp on the issues, assert myself, reinforce why these changes might be a good thing, etc. Obviously, it's a good idea. But I really wish I could just have picked up the phone tonight, told you what happened, which you probably already heard from my mom in a phone conversation during her lunch break, and you would have been able to just whip up the perfectly suited advice for me to handle the situation with my step-dad in a manner where we could both feel like we won. Hell, I would have called you last night before I went off with my guns half-cocked, and you would have given me that advice then and the situation wouldn't have ended up fucked up and with me being told it was still my fault, like I was back to being 15 again. And I'd be able to escape to your house as soon as I had a couple days off, to get some space, some perspective, and to cool off. I really could have used a good night of drinking and bitching with you. I have a few lovely friends who are kind enough to let me crash on their couch for a night, but they're not family, so they don't know my folks and can't call telling them to get this shit settled so I will get off their couch and back to my parents' basement.

But you aren't here and I'm at a loss as to how to fix this on my own in a way where I get any part of what I want without having to give away everything. And you could explain why I'm always in these situations with (straight) men, where I have to change completely to be satisfactory but they don't have to do anything. I can give up dating them, but I can't really stop one of them from being my step-father.

I just miss you so much. Everyday there's something else I want to tell you, show you, let you listen to, something I'd love to hear your opinion on, some bit of family history I can't quite remember and wish you were here to ask. The last two weeks in my group therapy, we focused on "Radical Acceptance." I've gotten to where I can tolerate that you are gone. But I haven't been able to accept it yet. Despite what therapy says about how radically accepting something isn't saying that it was ok, that it was what we wanted to happen, that it wasn't a bad thing, kinda like Oprah's opinions about forgiveness, I don't feel that is true, like radically accepting your death would erase how cosmically unfair it was, still is. It'll mean I don't still need you, but I feel like I need you more every day.

I hope you know how very very much I miss you.

A Tale of Two Cats

When you arrived, my older, female cat, already lounging on the couch, was more than happy to accept any and all attention you had to offer. While she spent some time in my lap, it was often only as a gateway to getting back into your lap. When you and I were together, when I lived back home, she knew your touch almost as much as she knew mine. But it has been years since that time and we wonder outloud if she actually remembers you or if she just likes to be petted by someone new.

My younger, male cat, however, is much much more wary. He spends the entire time you are there hiding under the couch where we sit. Just before you leave, because you want to see him as well, we search all his usual haunts, calling his name. He doesn't volunteer his presence. When I finally find him, hold him in my arms, he allows you to pet him, but doesn't offer any affection. At first I wonder if he just doesn't like another male on his territory, but just last week he readily jumped into the lap of my relatively newly-adopted male cousin who he'd never met. I start to wonder if he does remember you and isn't just showing the caution I should have been showing all this time.

I'm reminded again of how grateful I am that I don't have children, especially that I am not currently a single parent, with the responsibility of judging who to bring into their lives and when, and what to tell them if/when that person leaves their life. I'm still not good at judging those things for myself and still seem to tell myself that things will be different this time. Maybe they will be. Maybe they are.

Belated Valentine's Day Message

To Moneypenny. And to all my friends and family who keep putting up with me.

Two Songs, Same Message

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.