"Reach Out In the Darkness!"

I have learned many lessons about people this year.
The most disappointing lesson is that not everyone is drawn to be supportive of struggling, marginalized misfits the way that I am.
The best thing that I've learned is that, in caring for people worse off than myself, there is the discovery that A.) No one is necessarily "worse off" than me, and B.) When I really need a friend myself, they are there for me in a heartbeat. All the best things that have happened to me in my lifetime have been because in my suffering and reaching out for support, I have also caught the reaching hands of others.
And my life is all the better for it.
I feel a mixture of pity and disdain for people who shelter themselves from anything or anyone that might really make them feel something strongly -- People who won't reach out to the loner out in the streets, the sobbing woman standing in the grocery line, the man in the suicide ward who was still trying to steal kitchen knives in order to off himself.
These people are "THOSE People," the ones you should never associate with, the ones who will drag you down, burden you, take more than they will ever give back, have bad attitudes, struggle with depression or mental illness.
It is just as easy for these people I disdain to speak about all kinds of altruistic pursuits -- Just so long as they don't have to get their hands dirty doing it. These are the people who recycle trash, but refuse to give broken people a second chance with them. These are the people who passionately argue for social justice from the safety of their nice homes, but who would never volunteer at a shelter -- or anywhere else for that matter. They talk about poverty in Haiti, but don't donate to any charities. They say that it's a shame that mental illness isn't considered equal to physical illness, but you will never see them befriending anyone they met in the waiting room who seemed a little unstable. And

they would never ever actually strike up a conversation with any of "THOSE people."
I make friends easily, and I make a lot of them. 75% of my friends are such purely because at some point in their lives they needed someone to be there for them, and I made a point of being that person. The people toward I feel so much pity are not the people I met in homeless shelters, not the people I met in psychiatrist's offices, on the suicide ward, and neither is it the people I love who seem incapable of fitting in, or of holding back their most naked thoughts. No, for these marginalized people are stronger than the ones I pity so much -- and far more interesting to talk to.
The people whom I pity so much, are the people who can't seem to see that.
How very lonely it must feel to be perfect, to always get things right, to sit in the waiting room and stare down at your phone for fear of having to meet anyone's eyes and be forced to talk to them.
How very limiting it must be to only associate with "whole" people, with "normal" people --- With only the people you can benefit from as opposed to people who could benefit from you.
How commendable of them to not associate with lower life-forms.
They will live and die bereft of true friends in their lifetime, having left the world no better than they found it.
And absolutely certain that they were clever enough not to become entangled with anyone who might need them.
How empty must their lives be, how depressing!
But how very neat and tidy.
I don't go into any friendship thinking to myself, "What can I get out of this person?"
I don't ask myself, "Gee, I wonder if they've got their shit together, or if they're going to create unnecessary drama in my life?"
I think, "That person needs a friend; What can I do for them?"
I think, "This is a complex person -- What can I learn from them?"
You learn a lot.
You learn, for example, how much you really have to offer to the world, and how important it is for you to do that.
You learn to value every person you meet, to learn from every experience you have.
You learn that the woman with the incurable, degenerative disease who lives on welfare and was once an alcoholic is also a beautiful artist, and a kind soul at heart.
You learn that the girl nobody else liked during your grade school years is the kindest, most generous person there is -- quite possibly because she knows what it is to be mistreated, and she knows how it feels to have nothing -- And she just might have learned from you what it feels like to just give anyway. Or maybe you learn that from her.
You learn that even drug addicts can love their children and hope for the best for them.
You learn that people who never went to college can still be geniuses, gifted people with a purpose in life.
You learn that people are more important than things.
You learn that acts of kindness have no statutes of limitations, that a kindness done for another can

round back up on you, years after the fact, and become something kind that that person will now do for you.
You learn that helping others takes away that nagging emptiness you hold inside.
You learn that your life isn't about feeling safe or being stable; It's meant to mean something, to care about something, to give something without expecting anything back -- but getting everything that you need anyway -- perhaps by realizing that you have everything you need.
I never turn down a friend, and I try to make myself the friend of anyone I see who seems to be struggling in any way, and I try to use my own struggles to empathize and encourage them.
I pay it forward.
And for that I am never sorry.
The ultimate pity I feel toward these Avoiders is that they look at their life and relationships as some sort of zero-sum game, as if they will run out of time, energy, resources -- love -- if they give to much.
Why can't they see that the more you give, the more you have to give -- that the more people whom you love, the more love that you have and you get?

Response to Ferris State University's Vagina Monolouges

I just came back from seeing The Vagina Monologues again.
There is one statement that they open the show with that sticks with me tonight:
That, although women are at first very uncomfortable about the subject, once they open up it turns out that they love talking about their vaginas. It's a freeing thought, that maybe it's okay to have one and okay to talk about it. I mean, seriously - If you are a woman, it's a part of you.
Of course the great Mission of the show is to stop the silence surrounding domestic violence, but there's also a lot to be said for the overall sense of empowerment that it provides.

I laughed in recognition.

I cried in recognition.
I laughed and cried out of empathy and compassion.
I was inspired.
Frankly, I was actually kind of turned on. If I'd had a date tonight, it would have been a perilous thing. The show certainly makes you want to go out and do something!
Should I volunteer at the local women's shelter, or get laid? Hell, I can do both! It's my vagina.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was October and I was seven years old.

Our family was going to the school Halloween Party, back in the days when you didn’t have to claim it was a Harvest Party. My father had spent considerable time on a robot costume for my brother, who was now clumping around inside a box that was spray-painted silver with vacuum tubes sticking out of it – for arms, maybe. No Polaroid pictures exist, so I have to draw from my own spotty memory.

I had chosen to be a ghost. A ghost seemed like a powerful and scary idea, although the reality turned out to be two holes cut in an old bed sheet that rubbed my hair all around until it was static-charged and insisted on sticking into my eyes and getting sucked into my mouth. I was hot and tired before we’d even walked the few blocks to the school.

It was a grand party in the traditional sense – bobbing for apples with no mention of catching diseases from mouthing around in the same water as everyone else. I had to pull my costume off even to attempt this game, and was as disappointed by this as I would have been if my parents had made me wear a coat. What was the fun of being a ghost if everyone knew it was me? I was surprised at how difficult it was to actually clench a chunk of apple with my teeth. I’d make contact and then the apple would bob away from me. I tried repeatedly, until the closeness of the water made me fear drowning and I had to stop. I had similar difficulty with the apples dangling on strings from the ceiling. A volunteer tied my hands behind my back and I had to bite the apple and eat it from the string before my competitor. The apple bounced repeatedly off my face as I circled it like a puppy chasing its tail. Thump. Thump. Thump.

My brother won the costume contest that year. I remember being jealous. No one had spent any time at all on my costume, and it wasn’t as if he’d made that box himself.

I hid hotly beneath my sheet and scuffed along the sidewalk behind everyone, disturbing the crisp leaves. Enticed by the lit porches of the neighboring houses and joyful cries of “Trick-Or-Treat!” my brother and I begged Mom and Dad to let us get some candy. Kids in costumes were pushing past us to get to the houses. Mom and Dad were tired and didn’t feel like stopping anywhere on the way home. One of the jostling kids was the Bigger Boy who lived across the street from us. Gallantly, he offered to take us to a few houses along our route home.

This Bigger Boy was the one who organized all the neighborhood games – races, contests, soldiers, vampires, tag, colored eggs, hide-and-seek. He always told everyone what to do, everyone did it, and he was about as self-assured as anyone I had ever seen. People did what he wanted them to. I didn’t know what  bullying means.

As Mom and Dad wandered off up the street without us, we stopped at a couple of houses and yelled, “Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!”

The Bigger Boy – he seems in my memory to look about seventeen or eighteen – comes up with this brilliant Divide and Conquer Plan wherein we would each take a different side of the street – therefore getting twice as much candy. I was seven years old – I didn’t know the math. I didn’t stop and think to myself, “Wait a minute – If my brother goes on one side of the street, and I go with this Bigger Boy to the other side of the street, we will actually be getting half the candy we could be if we were all to go on all the sides of the street!” Nope – the Divide and Conquer Plan made perfect sense to me. What did not make sense was that the Bigger Boy didn’t take me to any houses across the street. Somehow we ended up in an abandoned parking lot next to an old brick building.

I remember the glass – those hexagon-shaped sparkles of broken windshields scattered across the cracks with weeds growing up out of them. Chunks of broken pavement. The roughness of the crumbling bricks in the wall. Heavy breathing. The pressure of the Bigger Boy’s hands against my shoulders, against my hip. The horrible, stomach-dropping feeling as he jerked up my sheet and pulled it against the wall until I was pinned there against it with my sneakers barely touching the gravel. How do those bits and eddies of gravel always collect outside old buildings? I could feel the tug of the elastic of my underwear as he thrust his hand down inside – inside, and  I had what I couldn’t describe except to say that it was yucky, a yucky feeling that scared me because it hurt and the more I struggled the tighter went the sheets.

I could hear my brother, not much older than me after all, calling us from across the street uncertainly. Where were we? He wanted to go home.

I wanted to go home. I told the Bigger Boy that I needed to go home. I think he told me to stop whining.

I became a ghost that night. Ghost-girl. It did not matter what I thought. It did not matter what I felt. It did not matter what I wanted. I couldn’t stop it. I was scared, but I physically could not get away. This was wrong. This was – this hurt. It hurt and I wanted to go home but I couldn’t get away. I did manage it, though, in a way. I went far far away inside my head someplace safe where nobody could find me. I don’t remember when we went back to my brother. I don’t remember when we came home. I think I ate a lot of candy, and it made me feel sick. The candy made me feel sick.

The next day, I told my mother what had happened. What I thought happened. Her reaction – I don’t remember her reaction but it scared me or embarrassed me because I hid behind the couch. I hid because I had told her. I told her, and I didn’t like it when she had to go and tell my father. I knew instinctively that he would be angry. And I didn’t know whether or not he was angry at me. I remember his face, red and screaming. I thought he was screaming at me. I remember the front door, wide open and swinging in his wake.

I was a ghost now. No one ever talked to me about what happened again. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t want anyone to be angry. And I spent my entire childhood that way. I tried to go unnoticed. Don’t look at me – I’m not attractive. I’m not someone you want to get too close to. I’m not anything at all. I will hide inside myself, far far away inside my head someplace safe where nobody could ever hurt me, I thought. But they did. Someone always did. And no matter how much I wanted to get away, how much I wanted to stop it, I always felt trapped. Trapped. Alone and afraid. I couldn’t tell anyone. No one would understand. They would tell the wrong people, and someone would be mad at me, and for some reason the anger of others – especially of men – terrified me. Please don’t be mad at me. Please don’t hurt me. Please. Can’t you see that I’m scared? That I can’t find my way home?

My ex-husband was complaining recently about sex education and how they’re going to start “teaching masturbation in schools, starting as young as five years old!”

“Whatever,” I thought.

I mean, first of all: Masturbation is normal. For crying out loud, our own daughter had begun much younger than five. She found her vagina and for whatever reason had decided that it was a pretty cool place to explore. I remember one of the daycare ladies who watched the kids while we were at work came to me and asked me in shocked tones if I had any idea if our daughter had been molested. ‘ For pity’s sake,’ I thought, ‘You need to get educated!’

Secondly, it’s not like the agenda of the government (as he would claim) is to actually demonstrate or show videos of masturbation. They’re going to say things that are established facts – such as that it isn’t dirty and wrong and sinful. Such as that a lot of toddlers do it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wicked or have been molested. Maybe they’ll actually prevent some zealot-idiot parents from burning their children’s fingers as punishment for their so-called wickedness, for God’s sake.

I think I started masturbating when I was seven years old. In my case, I do think it was because I was molested. I was trying to figure out why the hell someone had wanted to touch me there so badly. I was surprised to find that it didn’t feel bad if I had control over it. After awhile, it got so that I couldn’t relax and sleep at night if I didn’t do it. Maybe there was something sick and sad about it – or maybe not. It is what it is.

What I do know, however, is that a little sex education could have gone a long way. I needed to know that I had a vagina, and I needed to know that someone else might want to have it for some reason. I can’t imagine how my parents, in that day and age, could have expressed this to me, but I say Thank God for The Vagina Monologues.  Thank God that someone somewhere decided to break the silence and speak up about what is happening in our society to women and little girls. Thank God that I do not have to be ashamed of my body anymore. Thank God that I am no longer anything like a ghost.

It took a long time for me to even see it: what I had become. I was a frightened little girl way past the actual ages of innocence. I got married too young because I thought somehow that then I would be safe from harm.

I found out that the sheets could still pin me down and that my mind and then my body would snap back to when I was seven years old – a powerless little girl who could not save herself. Ghost-girl. It did not matter what I thought. It did not matter what I felt. It did not matter what I wanted. I couldn’t stop it. I was scared, but I physically could not get away. This was wrong. This was – this hurt. It hurt and I wanted to go home but I couldn’t get away. I did manage it, though, in a way. I went far far away inside my head someplace safe where nobody could find me. I wanted someone to love me and to hold me, to be gentle and to be kind, to stop and think for just one moment that maybe they’d lost me somehow. To notice that I was scared and that I’d gone away from my body for a time because I didn’t know how else to feel safe.

My marriage became a horrible thing.

Maybe if my ex-husband had been a little more intelligent, a little more thoughtful, a little more patient or kind…

Maybe it was my fault. I tried to explain.

It became a ritual, a thing that happened once in awhile because he couldn’t resist the urge. He seemed to think that he should. After all, masturbation was an evil thing, an unspeakable thing. Truthfully, we never spoke about sex. It was something that happened sometimes. I was seldom present.

It’s funny. It’s funny because I couldn’t sleep without it. I couldn’t sleep. But if I were to touch myself, it was like cheating. It was wrong. It made him angry, and I couldn't handle anyone being angry with me. I wasn’t just a ghost – I became a ghost who could never relax and sleep.

I thought about these things tonight. I watched The Vagina Monologues and I thought about how ashamed I had been of my body all of those years. How I always thought I was too fat, too plain. Or, conversely, how I was too much. How, if I were to truly come out from under that sheet and be my full self, I would be rejected. I would be embarrassing. My thighs would be too fat, or the damage inflicted by the knife in my emergency C-section would be too hideous, or the varicose vein that I’ve had running down my right leg ever since I gave birth to my last child.

My last child. Because my ex-husband hadn’t even wanted two children, hadn’t wanted the last one – and I, pinned beneath that sheet, couldn’t speak up for myself and voice the opinion that I didn’t want to have any part of my body cut and cauterized, mutilated so that any other little children that I might ever have held in my arms were now dead before they’d ever had a chance to live. It was a grieving thing, to “get my tubes tied,” as if something inside of me had been murdered against my will. Nothing special. Just another piece of my heart.

I watched The Vagina Monologues tonight.
I laughed at the woman who complained about how angry her vagina was at all the mistreatment.
I cried at all the women who had been abused.
I smiled at the story of the woman who had a good experience with a man. I smiled at how he seemed to adore her body just the way it was, and what a relief that was to her. What a release.
I thought of somebody that I know, and I smiled. Because not all men are assholes, and it's nice to remember that sometimes, and nice that the show is not such a militantly feminist show that it doesn't recognize that.
I cheered when the men who ran the technical aspects of the show came out at the end - particularly one dedicated husband who had helped out with the Ferris State University productions of the Vagina Monologues for the entire ten years of the show. Because he loved his wife and his daughter, and he wanted to promote a better, safer world for them to live in.
I cheered at the women, all of the women, because they stood up and talked about what had happened to them and were not ashamed.

Personal Independence Day

Today marks the anniversary of the day, nearly twenty years ago now, when my mother dropped me off at the homeless shelter and then drove away. I was nineteen, but hadn't graduated high school yet. There have been people who have said that they would never have forgiven their own mother for doing something like that, but that's because they don't really understand the situation. I believe that my mother, out of love, was doing something for me that she could not do for herself - leave a hopelessly abusive relationship that was literally killing her.
Crying in the empty room of the shelter, I pulled out my journal and scrawled "Personal Independence Day" on the next blank page as I began to write melodramatically about what had just happened to me. I had a sense of being totally and utterly on my own for the first time in my life, and it was scary instead of wonderful because I hadn't been remotely prepared for it.

But by the next year, when I had a job and my own apartment, I celebrated it.
And the next year, when I was in art college, I celebrated it.
The next year, I was married too young to someone I hardly knew, stranded in the woods with no driver's license and no idea that I had the freedom to leave any time I wanted to. Somehow I had not learned my mother's lesson yet.

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
 ~Alice Walker

The year after that, when I had enrolled in community college and was working on getting a degree in teaching, I celebrated the day.
I continued to celebrate every year - by doing things for myself that I was usually too self-sacrificing to do. Sometimes - most of the time, when I was married - it was something so simple that I could almost cry thinking back on it. A haircut my husband disapproved of. Buying myself a new journal. Skipping the dishes and watching a chick flick instead. Going for a walk by myself  in the woods. A step up from this would be visiting some shop or gallery that I had never been to before.

Over time, it became a sore spot and a big joke to my husband, who became less and less interested in me as a human being and less and less inclined to treat me with the basic respect accorded a human being. At best he would roll his eyes or accuse me of being selfish for causing him any kind of inconvenience - at his worst he actually would put a stop to it in some passive aggressive way (his modus operandi).

Immediately following the divorce, money was tight but doing those small things for myself was more common. Personal Independence Day might be the day I began attending a support group, the day I applied for Graduate School, the weekend retreat where I painted a picture to a live audience with music playing in the background. The day I attended the orientation to go on a trip to Ireland.

It took a few years for the scales to fall from my eyes so that I could see that I was worth it, that I deserved these things, and that I wasn't being selfish for wanting them.

It has taken a lifetime to be comfortable in my own skin, to not be that heartbroken girl whose parents had disappointed her.
A lifetime to realize that I had never been a victim on that day.
After all, it had been my choice to be left at that shelter.
My mother hadn't wanted to do it, but seeing that I refused to go back home where I saw only more pain ahead for the entire family, she took me back to the shelter. I had decided that I didn't have to live in a toxic, dangerous environment any longer. I had decided that my own worth was more important to me after all than what worth I held to them, or to others.
I went on to do the best I could do with what I had at my disposal at the time. I made mistakes, but I also made and met many of my goals. I am the person I am today because of that day at the shelter.
I am a wiser, more compassionate person. I have more to offer the world than I ever would have had if I had allowed myself to remain in bondage to judgement or oppression.

I am independent.
Being independent, I find more ease and joy in the company of others.
I love myself for who I am at my core, and I am aware that anyone else who gets to know me at that level can't help but love me, too.
And I celebrate that.

2013 Ferris State University Vagina Monologues

I have a beautiful daughter who is smart, funny, creative and kind.

She is my angel, my conscience, and my joy.
I love the way that she sees the world. She is kind to others, even if they are smelly, like her friend Kelly - she sees through the outside of people and into who they really are.
When she sees the ugliness in the world, she looks to me and says, "That's not very nice, is it, Mommy?"
And she makes me want to do something about it.
When she found out that some people actually sleep in boxes out on the street, she gave me all her piggy bank money and asked me if that would help them. We ended up donating online to the local shelter, which is something that you could easily do if you would like to offer your help, too. A more hands-on option would be to volunteer at a homeless shelter or other type of program.

All proceeds of The Vagina Monologues at Ferris State University goes toward WISE, which is a domestic violence and sexual assault services program.
Their vision is to empower people to create violence-free communities.
Their mission is to provide advocacy, safety options, and support services to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. WISE empowers individuals and families through respect and equality and works toward strengthening our communities through awareness, prevention, and education. They have partnered with The Vagina Monologues because they stand for the same things.

Statement of Beliefs:

We believe...

• In the equality of all people.
• Domestic Violence and sexual assault are crimes that affect individuals, families, and society.
• Domestic violence and sexual assault are the result of one individual's desire to control another individual.
• Ending domestic and sexual violence begins by creating an environment of tolerance and empowerment.
• Individuals who choose violence must be held accountable.

The Vagina Monologues are at Ferris State University on Thursday, April 25th at 7:03pm at Williams Auditorium. Tickets are available at the door. They are $5 with Student ID or $10.00.
You don't have to go to the show to help out. You can go to the WISE website and donate online.
I did.
My daughter is watching me.
She's looking to me to be smart, safe, and kind.
Just like her.

Accidentally Celebrating Valentine's Day

I've been helping my sister move into her new home in Grand Ledge - a lovely home with a river flowing through the backyard that you can see from the window when you're washing the dishes. I feel happy and safe when I'm there; as happy and safe as I feel anywhere.

Now, you'd think that happiness would be quite elusive for a divorced single woman on Valentine's Day, but I would tell you that it's all a matter of perspective. I could have taken the day as a sombre symbol of all that is dead in my life - of lost child-like dreams of True Love and fantasies of Happily Ever Afters with Prince Charming, all strewn behind me like markers in a cemetery. The road ahead is obscured by fog. I can either assume that I'm trapped in a horror flick, or blithely skip into the nearest house to await the Zombie Apocalypse... Hmn. I think the "or" is supposed to be an example contrary to that proposed beforehand. It's late, and I digress.

I happened to have had a lovely Valentine's Day - attended a tea party along with my adorable nieces and their mother, who is beautiful inside and out. I had fun and felt loved. I've had a hard time of it lately with the PTSD, so I didn't feel a need for anything more. I needed to drive home for the weekend to see my children. My daughter's name is Lucy, aptly named, as it means "bringer of light." My son, Stuart, cares for people so deeply that I'm afraid he'll develop ulcers worrying for them. I had sent them Valentines to let them know that I love them and think of them always. More than they know, for it's not possible to explain to them how many opportunities I've let pass on their behalf, or how lonely I am sometimes simply because I want what is best for them before what is best for myself. It's no sacrifice: I prefer to be alone over being with the wrong person. If anything, my love for them keeps me out of trouble. Left to my own devices, I imagine my hormones or my artistic temperament (call it what you will) would land me in some awkward situations.

Tonight on the drive I was puzzled by the number of people in ditches. It had rained steadily on and off from the Lansing Area to just beyond Grand Rapids, and then turned to snow, but the roads didn't seem icy.

Until the car just ahead of me braked hard and sudden for no visible reason.

I touched my brakes - I wasn't close, and I was only going around 45 or 50 miles an hour, but the tires of my car were not pleased and apparently didn't feel a need to catch against the road properly upon that pressure. I felt the body of my car do a little fish-tail wriggle, so I took my foot off the brake and worked patiently at straightening it out. The car responded with about as much sensitivity as my ex-husband halfway through an orgasm - which is to say that I ended up backward in a ditch wondering what on earth I had done wrong in my lifetime to have ended up cold and alone so far from home.

It was with total detachment that I observed the ditch approaching. After the initial acceleration of my heartbeat at the realization that I no longer had control of my car, I felt myself relaxing into the situation as it unfolded in slow, almost stop-photography motion against the bluish light of my headlights across the snow and the shadows beyond. The car slid smoothly and turned as gracefully as if perched upon the diaz at an auto show.

I sit and take inventory of my feelings. I'm not injured and my car is still running.
I'm alone.
There is no one at home to call.
No one to be worried.
I call and worry my sister anyway, then text all my other siblings and a couple of close friends. Nothing anyone can do. It just seems like someone ought to know.
Life feels that way sometimes.
Like something happens that is significant to you and someone else ought to notice.
Perhaps that's arrogance on my part.

I called for a tow. I keep coverage on my car because it's old and my knowledge of vehicles is almost as limited as the number of people I could call if I were in a serious accident.
It was going to be a good half hour before the tow truck came.
I watched and listened and several ambulances and blaring police sirens passed on either side of the freeway.
I wondered how exactly they would locate me, other than by the fact that I specified I'd been going Northbound past a specific exit and was now facing South.
I wondered if they charged extra for having to get you turned around again.
I wondered if I was far enough off the road.
I tried to pull out of the ditch myself.
The wheels spun.
Nothing doing.
Out of my control.

Life is irritating in this; that you can do your very best and still have so little control over the outcome.

I keep trying anyway.

Philosophically, I start digging around in my bag for the box of Valentine's Day candy from my nieces' great grandma.
Couldn't get out of the ditch.
Had no hot date waiting for me.
Might as well munch on chocolates.
The first one had crispy bits of coconut inside.

A man from the road commission or something stopped and told me that the police were on their way, along with the wrecker. He offered to stay with his vehicle running nearbye until they came.

An ambulance stopped, and the EMT got out to make sure I was all right.

The police came and went, determining I was good to wait for the towing company, but cautioning me to call 911 if any other vehicles ended up smashing into the ditch with me.
Comforting thought.

Funny thought: Why were all these people making such a fuss over me? It was as if all these men were deliberately out on Valentine's Day, avoiding taking their wives or girlfriends out that evening. Shoot - they seemed almost disappointed every time they stopped and found that I wasn't mutilated.

I texted my brother something to that effect.
He joked that I should ask one of them out.

I thought about the last time I'd been in any kind of auto accident where I'd landed in a ditch...

Springtime, I believe.
My children were still little; They'd fallen asleep in their respective booster and car seat, strapped safely in the back.
We were heading along a dirt road in the middle of nowhere to visit someone. I was dressed in a long brown skirt with the brown heels that reminded me of a female Sherlock Holmes, wearing my favorite form-fitting shirt that I vainly supposed belied my twice-pregnant status.

The van had suddenly started fish-tailing strangely, skidding around on the gravel with a growing force of its own - Nothing anything like calm hitting my senses as I realized I was heading into the trees and couldn't stop no matter how hard I pressed the brakes or how tightly I was clutching the steering wheel (so tightly that my hands smelled of rubber for three days afterward). Reeds and water and trees came crashing toward my face as the vehicle slammed down deep into the drop at the side of the road. I closed my eyes helplessly against the slapping of the cattails against my windshield and the screams of my terrified children -

It seemed oddly quiet when I opened my eyes.
My children were sobbing and screaming for me, but a strange calm settled over me as I took in the fact that we were alive.
I unwrapped my fingers from the steering wheel with an effort - they felt stiff and strange. I could see the windshield was broken - the steering wheel of the van seemed strangely close, as did the ceiling. I unfastened my seat belt and splashed down against the glass arching over me - realizing with a shock that my vehicle was actually upsidown in a foot or more of water.

I could smell gasoline, and I could see it floating along the top of the water in rainbow eddies.

I crunched around the top of the seat, crawling with my bare knees against the broken windshield toward the sound of my children. I made out the side door above my right shoulder and reached up to pull it open. I could see the sky above the ditch from there, deep as it was, but the door refused to move. I wanted to panic, but then I saw my children's red faces, their mouths open and eyes pleading.They were dangling from their seat belts and screaming for me to help them, angry and confused that I had let this happen and hadn't fixed it yet. Determinedly, I craned around and pulled off my heel, prepared to smash the large window along the door open if necessary.

Now the door was hanging wide open to the sky.

It made no sense, but I had no time to think about it.
I snapped open the catch to my daughter's car seat and caught her as she fell toward the water. She latched onto my neck and right arm like a vice and screamed into my ear as I turned to get my son. I had to drag her through the water to reach him because she wouldn't loosen her hold so that I could move her above it. I had to strain upward to reach the catch of his seat belt.
He fell with a helpless splash into the water, landing underneath his booster seat.
I cursed myself, hauling him out and up again with my free arm.
I'd been so preoccupied with getting him out that I'd forgotten his seat didn't lock in like hers.
They were both screaming at me now, and the smell of gas was almost overwhelming.
I thought of the old trucks that would barrel heedlessly along the back roads, oblivious of the road rules of ordinary cityfolk, flicking their cigarette butts out the open windows without a glance behind.

I wedged my remaining heel against the front seat and pulled both children out from the gaping door into the sunshine, crawling down the side of the car and landing with a splash in the reeds before hauling them up out of the ditch. They were reluctant passengers because they were too young to understand that in making them move I was helping them.

For years afterward my daughter would wake from naps in the car screaming as if reliving the trauma.

We walked.

I was barefoot.

I don't know how long we walked, but there were no houses and it was a long time in the faltering, sobbing steps of my children before anyone came for us.

A kindly farmer called my husband and the police, respectively, and let us wait in his truck for them to arrive.

I don't suppose I'll ever forget the look on his face when he got there. He gave me a look of such anger and utter disgust that I felt smaller than the ash of the cigarette I'd imagined being flicked at us while we were still trapped in the van. He gathered up the children in his arms and kissed them and tucked them safely into his car, then proceeded to snap questions at me about how fast I'd been going and how carelessly I must have been driving for this to have happened. Head hanging, I crawled into the passenger side of the car and sat there, dripping and stinking of gasoline, ashamed at what kind of a mother I was to have taken the lives of our children so lightly.

It didn't matter that later the police determined that I wasn't responsible for the accident, or that the "shop" found out that not the axle itself, but the entire shaft that held the axle to the car, had been rusted clean through and snapped before my van had even left the road, most likely causing the entire accident in the first place.

It didn't matter any more than anything else concerning me had ever mattered while I was in that relationship. I was expected, on that day as on any other, to be home intact, on time, with dinner ready and the kids and house spotless, ready, if needed, to serve my function in the bedroom that evening whether we'd actually made eye contact during that day or not. It didn't matter that I'd been scared or that I'd been brave, if it were Valentine's Day or my birthday -

I sat in my car in the snow for over an hour and a half tonight, eating chocolates bought by a thoughtful woman who delighted in attending a small tea party held by her granddaughters, and I thought of all the things I've done and seen, and compared this night to others I have had, and I felt - seriously?

Happy.

No one was going to yell at me when they got there.
I might go home alone, but it was better than going home to captivity or indifference. (They're one and the same, in the end)
Overall, it was the happiest Valentine's Day I can remember.

Breast Bitch

Breast cancer survivor has beautiful inking done.

And so, among other challenges in life, I've had four biopsies even though I am not yet forty years of age, and it's a literal pain in the... breasts. Daily. You get used to it. Complaining does no good - the doctors say to take some ibuprofen and shut my pie hole. My sister, however, says that if more MEN suffered from this sort of problem in, say, their genitalia, they'd sure's hell come up with a better option - and like yesterday.

And so I saw this tattoo. I have no tattoos. Very few things i can think of that I would want permanently etched upon my skin. And yet, looking at this, which is like a beautiful and even sexy shirt, I think to myself,

"Yep, if something really bad ever happens to my "girls" due to these fribroidednomas for which I get checked every year for cancer that hurt  and for which men do not seem to feel I need any treatment other than mastectomy, I'm totally getting this new set done at a nice clean tattoo shop.

 

Then I'm burning all my bras in front of John Boehner's house.

 

Don't worry about me today, though. I'll be fine after I take a few ibuprofen.

Until the Violence Stops

The Ferris State University 2013 Vagina Monologues will be performed in Williams Auditorium on March 1, 2012 beginning at 7:30 p.m.

All proceeds go to W.I.S.E

Tickets:
$5 for students with ID
$10 for others

This is my cause.
I am what Eve Ensler would term a "Vagina Warrior."
I was in the show last year and promoted it heavily on facebook.
A few people asked me whatever happened to feminine mystique and if I were a lesbian or not, but I wasn't terribly concerned over their opinions. I had my reasons (very strong ones) for speaking up, and I wasn't going to let public opinion sway me.
By way of explaination or clarification, however, I posted the following note:

I think it's time I explained what on earth possessed me to audition for something like the Vagina Monologues in the first place.
I was certainly not "raised to talk about these things."
I even feel a little guilty about posting such a personal note. How shameful! This is a polite little social network where people are not supposed to burden everyone with their personal agendas and issues.
By way of explaination, let me introduce you to myself and to the women I am representing in this program.
During my divorce from my ex-husband, I ended up homeless in Grand Rapids. My children and I stayed at Mel Trotter, because I hadn't established residency and no one else would take us.
My ex-husband hacked into my email account and took the letter I'd written to my family asking for help getting the children to a safer shelter and he took it to a judge, making me out to be some sort of Andrea Yeats who had kidnapped our children and was endangering them.
In retrospect, had I conducted my affairs more wisely, I might have done a few things differently so that I could have looked a little better in the  eyes of the judge. Hindsight and all that.
My ex was granted temporary emergency custody, and I ran out of money to pay the lawyer to get full custody back again. In case you haven't noticed, I see my children every weekend.
Within a course of one summer, I had slept in no less than three separate shelters, one hotel that charged by the hour, a Super 8 that my brother paid for (all my family lives out of state), and the back of my van under a pile of garbage bags with my clothes while parked in an empty lot behind an abandoned building.
I heard through Frontline Community Church of a ministry called Healing Hearts, and went to my first meeting so full of grief and guilt and shame that I couldn't even look in a mirror at my own face.
I thought God was punishing me for messing up my life and the lives of my children by leaving my husband and allowing him to divorce me. I had some old-fashioned, Old Testament ideas about God back then, reinforced by the man I was married to.
Of course I was wrong, but it took some time before I came to realize that.
I got myself a job and an apartment and began the slow process of rebuilding my life.
People talk about rebuilding their lives and they generally mean that they had to become financially stable again.
What I mean that I had to completely change the way that I viewed myself and my life, and God's view of and purpose for my life.
Healing Hearts, along with a Divorce Care group at Impact Church in Lowell, helped me to not only shed light on my past, but also to see it in myself.
The hardest part about the process for me was the chapter in our workbook on childhood sexual abuse. I never really had too much to say on that topic if I could avoid it. I didn't consider being molested by the neighbor boy as real abuse because it had been so long ago, but when I read the list in that chapter of traits a person might have if they had been sexually abused, I found that I had nearly all of them. That really disturbed me for a long time.
The fact is, anyone who has been physically and emotionally abused and repeatedly had their boundaries broken as a child would share many of these traits, regardless of sexual abuse. Furthermore, I have come to see that what happened to me was very serious - it stole my innocence and violated my trust, and I spent the rest of my life until that point "protecting" myself from being hurt by encasing myself in a little half-life world where nothing touched me. I think very few people knew that I had a troubled childhood. It wasn't something I told very many people in high school.
I was horrifically lonely long before I ever got married.

Part of the problem was that I had not been raised to talk about those kinds of things. In fact, when I told my mother I was going to be in the Vagina Monologues and I told her what it was all about, she said stiffly, "Well, the way I was raised, people just didn't talk about those things. Why, your grandmother will be rolling over in her grave."
I told her quietly that maybe if we had talked about those things more, I would have been better able to tell her what the neighbor boy had done to me. Maybe we could have talked about what happened and how it made me feel, and maybe I wouldn't have grown up ashamed of my body and ashamed to be a woman and... ashamed.
That's why I auditioned for The Vagina Monologues in the first place.
I felt it was time to talk.

I auditioned because I heard the money would go to the local women's shelter, which has experienced horrendous cuts just like the school systems, and is short-staffed. Having been there, let me tell you that those women need all the love and support that anyone can give them.
What the author of the Monologues did was actually interview over 200 women about how they felt about their bodies and what their experiences had been. These are real women's stories, and they are not rated G. Many of them have suffered and struggled and done, as I did, all the wrong things, but only because they were doing the best that they could with what they knew at the time.
There are parts of the show that make me very uncomfortable. After all, I was not raised to talk about "those things," and because some of the women use language that I wouldn't. You hear them in all their anger, humor, courage, humiliation, guilt, shame, love, sin, misguidedness and glory.
But the main theme is not to be ashamed.

Some of the women whose voices we hear have been raped.
Some were abused as children.
One angry woman complains about how awkward and uncomfortable it is to go to the OBGYN.
There's a duo that talks about rape warfare in foreign countries.
There's a woman who describes how she ended up in the sex trade.
A woman who describes watching her grandchild being born.
A little girl who tells about how she feels about her vagina.
A homeless woman who falls in love with another woman because that was the only person who had ever been kind to her.

One woman talks about sex - actually, many of the women talk about sex.
There's an elderly woman who sounds just like my mother. That one is both hilarious and heart-breaking. (Also just like my mother.)
Imagine my horror when I was given a part in the five-woman cast story of a transgendered person. After all, I don't personally even know any transgendered people. Well - I don't know that I know any...
However, I don't believe that judgement or hatred is the road to healing for anyone. How could it be?
I have come to look at these women in this show as the very women that Healing Hearts was created to help.
They need someone to love them unconditionally and to let them know that they are worthy and they can succeed in life despite what they have been through. I know in my case, all the things that happened to me happened for a reason.
After my divorce, I thought I had lost everything.
But I gained myself.
Through the love and care of kind women of the shelters, and the guidance and love of my family, friends, and spiritual family, I became a new woman.
A woman who could stand in front of a crowd of people and say out loud that love is stronger than hate, and that they are not alone.

I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support I received from people after they read this - and touched beyond words when many women came on there and shared their own stories with me. Being open and honest about yourself if a cathartic experience in which you almost always find someone else really does understand and want to help.
That show was life-changing for me.
I highly recommend it because it could be life-changing for you as well.
Shocking, perhaps, and never quite what anyone expects to encounter, but life-changing.
It leaves you thinking.
And all the proceeds go toward the local women's shelter.
Since the Violence Against Women Act was allowed to drop, these shelters need more of our help than ever.

Maybe, if you can find the courage, you could share your story with me. Break the silence. I understand if you can't, believe me. Just know that in a sense I am talking to you, and thinking of you. Things do get better. Don't give up. And don't let them get away with it without speaking up when you've healed enough!

Look No Further

Today I am dancing around my house dressed in a flowing white skirt, and enjoying my own company. Carols play softly on the radio now as I write; a gently lit tree within my line of vision, strung with pearls and miscellaneous baubles representing the years of my life and the darling angels who have graced it. I began the day treading lightly upon each emotion, cautiously testing for the accustomed pitfalls and dips of despair, but to my surprise there was only happiness waiting for me. I am happy for no earthly reason.

I find myself thinking of Emily Dickinson and wondering if I am turning into her a little bit, for she was brilliant, reclusive, thought of as eccentric by her community, and had a penchant for wearing white. I'm hardly a recluse, however. I love people and have done theater and taught or painted before audiences and have enjoyed it all immensely. And what is eccentricity anyway? It seems to me that it is marked by being entirely yourself and not allowing the critiques of others to deter you. I admire people like that, though I've wasted much of my life being somewhat of a chamelon for survival purposes. Like Dickinson did, I am learning to love my own company. Certainly I can relate to a writer of long ago who maintained friendships through correspondence. I have an entire network of people whom I encourage and support via facebook or Gmail, and who encourage and support me in return. Writing is a joy; the present I gave myself on this busy week of the dying year. I want to write how I am feeling and the wonders that I have known this season.

It all began weeks ago when I began to experience that weak, empty longing for something unnamed that generally prompts me to wander stores and search for something to buy that will fill the emptiness. Some people with PTSD get suicidal when they have an episode - I have myself, here and there - but more often I find myself blindly wandering the shelves of department stores and bookstores, antique malls and art galleries desperately trying to fill my well with something beautiful that will wipe the ugliness from inside; the emptiness and the fear that comes so tangibly before me that I'm once again a frightened child curled into a ball beneath my blankets with my arms wrapped around my head. I usually manage to talk myself out of actually buying anything when I feel this way; I just flee for the outside world singing about how downtown will help me 'forget all my troubles, forget all my cares...' but always I return home and have to face myself again. Some people with PTSD use drugs or alcohol to hide from the stark reality of their lives -  the fact that you can undergo treatment and take medications but you can never techically recover from it - but I need to hold myself to a higher standard than to numb myself in that way. It's more than a need - it's a conviction. For me, it is better to look myself in the eyes and ask myself what it is that I really am longing for.

There are times when I feel that frightened little girl taking over and I want to push her down and press my hands over her mouth. 'Be quiet!' I hiss inside, as if talking to an annoying younger sibling, 'You'll ruin everything!' She's scared and she's messing up my job by bursting into tears when people are mean to her, or allowing people to trample all over her instead of speaking up for herself. I can't begin to describe how aggravating she is! Of course, trying to silence or ignore her is not what is required - I have to treat her with the kindness and compassion that she is lacking inside. I have to teach her how to love herself for who she is, face the realities of life unafraid and able to express herself. She is not wicked or wrong, just undisciplined. I have to see and appreciate her for the beautiful girl that she is. After all, without her I would always be serious and push myself far too hard. And as the Good Doctor once said, "What is the point of being an adult if you can't be childish sometimes?" The childish side of me loves bright lights and pretty packages and believes wholeheartedly in every idealistic whimsy to cross her mind. The childish side just might render my dreams into reality one day, if only I believe in her a little bit.

My best friend at the moment is a charming, gravelly-voiced Vietnam Veteran who is the only person outside my family who understands what it is to have your past relentlessly, involuntarily dog you all of your life through no fault of your own. My siblings understand the pain even if they don't experience it in the same way, but others tend to think I'm making excuses for myself, or making a mountain out of a molehill. This grizzled vet with twinkling blue eyes listens to me, empathizes, and never tells me that my view of my experience is invalid just because others (himself included) have had it worse. Instead, he notices when I'm having a rough time - recognizes the skin-crawling hyperviligence that causes me to jump when people greet me and always makes a point of giving me a conspiratorial wink or small present to boost my morale. Few understand our friendship - they think dirty old men and illicit affairs. It's hard in these times to see something pure and uncomplicated as understanding the struggle of another human being and offering them support. In this I feel very blessed. He brought Christmas treats to work  and we shared a long, smiling look that expressed our feelings perfectly: Life is hard, but that makes it all the more important to celebrate the people and the memories that are most precious to us.

I determined that this year I would do something for someone else; give back some of this good that I see in the darkness and thereby spread a little more light. First my children and I sat down and made cards for the grandmother of a friend of mine. I only know this dear lady through my friend, but as I understand it, this is probably her last Christmas. I talked to the kids about what a person might like to hear in that case, and we set about making cards. I thought I was quite clever in simply blessing her and her family this holiday season, but my children out-did me when they wrote of how they are thinking of her, and how very much she must know that she is loved after receiving so many cards. Their simple compassion seemed to clear my head and make the point of the season shine like a path before me. We began plotting what else we might do to make the holiday easier for someone else. My son's friend didn't have a Christmas tree. I agonized over the political correctness of bringing them one - What if they were allergic to pine, or Jewish, or simply disliked the mess of a tree in their home? But the little boy really would like one, so I decided to take a risk. I don't have much money right now. I won The Biggest Loser contest at work because I've been living off soup and crackers for three months. I didn't care: Now it was a matter of the moral development of my children that we undertake this act of generosity. We drove to a tree lot and donated canned goods for the soup kitchen in exchange for a tree. The owners, certain we were supplying a need of our own, piled us with ornaments and tied the tree securely to the hood of my old 1996 jalopy with the windows that don't roll down and the wreath of rust crusting the base of the body.

It was no fancy tree, but the family accepted it with gratitude and joy. As it turned out, they hadn't had a tree in years, following a near-fatal accident that had left many of the family members brain damaged and living on oxygen. I was shocked at the small space in which they all lived; touched by their love and capacity to give to one another at a time when they had nothing material to offer. They gave me a little snow globe, and the matriarch of the family cried with happiness that someone had taken the time to think of them. I left their home humbled and subdued, grateful to think how my children are with me today, healthy and smart. I, too, am healthy and have what I need. Suddenly my sense of emptiness and loss was gone; my perspective of having what I need, thank God, and never mind all the things I seek for that I cannot define.

Having found Christmas for myself in this way, I thought I was about as content as anyone could be this season. I had what I needed - and it was something that I could give. Lesson learned. Christmas done.

But it wasn't.

Once nearly twenty years ago, I was kind to someone who wasn't necessarily all that kind toward me. I had this conviction that if I showed compassion no matter what, I could change things. I've found since that this approach sometimes doesn't work if the other person is broken enough, but it worked then. I kept concentrating on the good in that person, and eventually they had a change of heart and we found something like friendship between us. I was telling this story to some students of mine last year when we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird and thinking of how the character Atticus  Finch could find the courage to bow and smile at Mrs. Dubois who said the most ugly things to him, or how he could pity that hateful racist, Bob Ewell. Coincidentally, the very person I was describing to my students contacted me on facebook that week. I had made far more of an impression than I had imagined - and as proof of that, a beautiful paint-splattered Angel appeared at my back door this past Friday with an envelope that enabled me to buy presents for my children without having to worry about paying my rent, too. Maybe George Baily would look at her and say cynically, "You look like the kind of angel I'd get," but I hugged her, and almost as soon as that happened she was gone. I'd think I'd dreamed it if I hadn't seen my children opening the gifts yesterday and literally jumping up and down and rolling on the floor over them. No kindness is ever wasted. No gift is ever given that is not returned to you in some form. I can't wait to hear how my dear Angel is blessed by her kindness. Perhaps like myself she will have simply felt it as she walked away from my door. I certainly hope so.

From then on I have felt peace. Peace despite not having the ideal life where my kids are with me full time, or in this case not with me on Christmas. Peace despite not having much room, not having the ideal job or the ideal social status or the ideal anything, really. Peace. Peace because it's not about fitting a certain standard of living or being or belonging: It's about loving myself and others equally, believing the best of myself and others, and giving every good and perfect gift received from above. And so I rest at home, Christmas carols on the radio, my tree lit just for me, my old heater blazing like a fireplace and my heart blazing right along with it. 

I guess it took me long enough - five years alone before I finally feel satisfied simply to be myself and enjoy the time alone. I married young partly because I didn't want to face myself; didn't know how to be alone and didn't want to teach myself. This morning as I watched my children open gifts at their father's house, my ex-husband told me that his anger and verbal abuse were a figment of my imagination. He's long since written me off as crazy for leaving a prize like him, and just wanted to make clear that he'd had nothing to do with my unhappiness. I could be angry or bitter, but I didn't feel that at all. I just felt glad to be free and able to see the truth for myself despite what he thinks. Safe and secure back in my own home, I dress in white and look myself in the eyes and pronounce, "You have what you are looking for. It's been inside of you all along."

This Christmas, I might just say the same to you.

The Woman Hated the End of the Novel

Every day at least one kind person stops by this blog to view what's going on in my life or mind.
Thank you, kind stranger.
I feel as if I am walking through life with you.
We will laugh; we will cry - We will have to have a chat sometime.

I feel subdued tonight.
Nothing I'm reading has turned out right.
I mean, sometimes I want a certain thing to happen by the end of a novel, and then when it doesn't I feel just as disappointed as if it were my own life that had floundered.

Now I've decided that I'm not subdued; I'm angry.

In the Victorian Age, women were considered the weaker sex and any sign of distress, temper, or having an opinion could be attributed to a nervous disorder or mental illness.
Sometimes I don't see where things have changed all that much.
I was never hospitalized for mental illness, but certainly I have suffered injustice at the hands of judgemental people who had no desire to get to the bottom of what was really happening as opposed to what they perceived as happening based on the careless words of others.

Argh.

I should delete this.

Instead I will work on writing a more measured response to the day... tomorrow.
After I've had some sleep.

Bless all the little children tonight.
Champion the causes of idealists and dreamers.