It's Not Business, It's Just Personal

I have a story for you. It's about single motherhood and court systems and poverty and helpless, useless anger.

Once upon a time in a Red State with wide open spaces, opportunistic plants and animals that were either fleet or able to burrow, a woman married a man in one of those really cozy and creative ceremonies that stood for their individuality.

She was tentatively diagnosed as bipolar. He was concretely diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, albeit of the High Functioning kind.

What's a high functioning schizophrenic? First of all, that's the kind who often knows their hallucinations are not real. Secondly, they have a good idea of what delusional thinking looks and feels like so they are able to fight against the maligned thoughts. Thirdly, they know what steps they have to take and what nuances they have to portray in order to be treated more normally and to feel more normal. They spend less time hospitalized and can maintain a fringe-normal existence most of the time.

For this woman, the odd but workable functioning of the man was acceptable. She was a free thinker, after all, and loathe to allow conscious beings to be boxed and labeled for all time.

At his heart, the man was kind and thoughtful and fought hard to maintain his sanity. He put in a colossal effort, bordering on heroic, to live freely and double-check his thinking. Still, he was the victim of a psychotic illness and was at the mercy of how well medication worked and if the very insidious delusion of medication being harmful was actively tearing him down.

Tentatively bipolar? What does that mean?

That means there were plenty of outside factors acting on the woman that caused her deep grief and a tendency to disassociate. The factors were as follows; PTSD from sexual assault incidents, a dying thyroid, and a tendency towards major depression. The dying thyroid wasn't figured out until a few years after its actual death. Put all these together and you can have a pretty passable version of bipolar disorder. What the woman lacked was manic episodes, destructive manic behaviour, and psychotic features. No hallucinations. No delusions. No way to put all together into a solution, either, so the diagnosis stood for nearly a decade with a big question mark after it in all the paperwork.

About three years into their marriage, with the woman truly understanding that she would be the rock, the provider, the hausfrau and the witching rod for reality, the man decided that his then-current medication was killing him.

After much fuss and wringing of hands on the woman's part, the man and his doctors went ahead with a medication change that ended up being a mortal wound to their relationship. Yes, it made the man more energetic and peaceful in his center, but it also made him more aggressive, less emotionally sensitive, and gave him a sense of entitlement with a twist of inability to see outside himself. The fundamental personality change that the woman feared (because of years of research and personal observation) became the new reality.

The woman lost her gentle bear, but refused to give up on her marriage and her husband. She was a good woman with a ramrod moral conscience and she determined that she would Make This Marriage Work. It would simply (hahahahaha!!) be a matter of strength of will and ability to adapt on her part. She was sure she could do it. She was sure she had no choice.

Years later, with the scars and resentment binding her heart into stone silence, it took a triple-punch of incidents to finally obliterate her tenacity and self-damaging loyalty. Their relationship ended with all the typical drama plus a little police intervention and a David Lynchesque scene of blue and red lights, mumbling and prophetical man in the driveway, weeping child under the dining room table,and granite-faced woman gathering her things in a pillowcase and lying to her child that everything was okay.

Walking into the courtroom for the temporary custody hearing, the woman was devas tated but confident in the outcome. The man had been hospitalized time and again while they were married, the boys in blue had been involved multiple times, his diagnosis was the biggest, baddest one you could get short of Insane, and he had no ability to work to support his child. Meanwhile, the woman's diagnosis had been morphed into bipolar II. Tendency towards depression, no psychotic features or incidents, no manic features. She ran hot and hard at times in order to plow through the chaos around her and at times cried for days (nights, really, when no one could see). She worked, she provided, she kept house and she kept her house stumbling along.

She wished desperately that her soon-to-be ex-husband would never again become psychotic. She had prayed for years for him to be spared his awful burden to no avail. All she knew going into the courts was that the danger of a slip in reality for the man was a direct danger to their child. The slips were fast, he was secretive about them, and it often took days for him to finally seek help if he did so at all.  She also knew exactly what the agony of those days was to anyone within range of the man. She had been the feather wall between her husband in illness and their child. It was inconceivable that he would be granted custody. She figured he'd get weekends and some hours after school with their child. After all, the child adored his father and it was good. She had faith that the Justice System would do actual justice because this case concerned a child.

The Judge handed down this decision: Week on, week off custody. Legally, the man and the woman were equally capable of caring for the child according to his decision. What had never been a 50/50 split in caregiving (or providing or housekeeping or feeding or sanity) was suddenly, coldly, the way it would be.

The woman fought it. She fought it for about fifteen thousand dollars. She fought it all the way to the devastation of her savings and way past her ability to get any more loans from her family or the bank. It took that much money for her to realize that his backers had no intention of stopping his funds. He was in it for twice what she was and had no signs of slowing the spending.

Finally, out of desperation and extreme poverty, she came to see a way through.

Custody agreements. They will separate your liver from your body and you will learn to live with a great big, bloody hole in the center of your self.

And now? What does the woman do now? She tried running away. That didn't work and she will now learn that patience is a virtue. So, she waits. She waits for the inevitable with the man and she will be always vigilant, always injured, always compassionate for his burdens, and never forgiving for his arrogance. She will wait for the day when she has to pick up her child who has just seen far too much from someone he adores.

What then?

I can't tell you that. I really don't know. I'm living in fear, anticipation, sadness, and hope. Every other week I am calm and unafraid. Those are the weeks I have my son. In the meantime, I watch. In the meantime, my child is doing just fine and I guide my compass by that.

Of Enlightenment and Office Supplies

I've been trying to blend together the two main directions of my life; the inner one where I spend whole lifetimes in contemplation of quantum everything, and the outer one where I seek employment, buy groceries, and generally suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

The more I contemplate it, the less I am able to mix the two. Still, I am living and breathing, thinking and acting, and it's quite apparent I don't need to understand how they bleed together in order for them to do so. It's kind of like looking in the mirror. The person I see looking back at me doesn't look like I feel. If I feel my way through it, I'm a pretty amorphous ball (blob?) of energy with a core of impenetrable, swirling (!!!). There's no word for that (!!!) in my language. That's part of the mystery, I guess? No matter what it is, I like knowing its there and recognizing that I'd know it if I saw it but can't tell you what it is.

Another thing about my duality. I find so much of what surrounds me to be beautiful and awesome and worthy of a quiet, steady, grateful glow... but also very funny. Wickedly funny. Painfully funny. Sometimes, what I see is just plain vulgar and horrific and I think I don't know how I keep living, but I'm still laughing at some tiny bit of irony amidst the viscera.

When I was twenty, the whole of my awareness came crashing down around me in a cloud of defiant terror and I had a very hard time reassembling my self. All these constructs of thought that I had about the world being basically good and right splattered everywhere around me.

I'll give you the brief version because the long form is useless to me now. I look at it like you might see the history of war on microfiche. It's done, it's gone, it's recorded and its impact no longer makes me gasp for breath. It's just left a sort of gossamer web of understanding and cynicism on me.

I went to the door of a man (boy) I hardly knew to give him a message from a friend. His demeanor, his presence, even his scent set off alarm bells in my marrow. I ignored my fear, confident that nothing could happen to me in the middle of a small town dormitory. I was wrong. I spent the night there, cold and frightened so deep down that I never shook. I did what he asked. I agreed with his raving delusions. I went so far as to wrap him in a blanket when he complained of being cold.

I got out of there with bruises, internal scratches that took weeks to heal, a mild concussion and an utter loss of self. But I got out of there alive. You cannot heal what is dead. I knew that much. I didn't know how to put all those raw and betrayed pieces together.

His behaviour didn't shock me. Every college girl knows the scary man stories. I knew the statistics, I knew the proper responses to prevent rape, I even knew from my own experience how forced sexual contact is something I didn't want. What I didn't know was what happens if you don't get a chance to fight back. I didn't know what to do if screaming and kicking wasn't an option. I learned that I will not die fighting. I will survive however I have to.

My response shocked me. I tried to be proud of myself for knowing that I wasn't going to survive if I fought this former military man tooth and claw, but I was horrified that it didn't kill me to acquiesce. I was angry at myself for my heart continuing to beat despite the crushing weight of what had happened. I wasn't sure that I'd made the right choice in surviving because as time went on, the agony of the entire situation brought me to my knees, soundlessly screaming, too many times to count. I wasn't sure I wanted to live.

That's when I learned that I am a ball of energy. I learned it because the light went out. In the middle, I was utterly dark. From the dark grew a void, tiny but impossibly endlessly powerful. I was going to spend the next ten years dancing with that darkness. All my choices would be either in accordance to or in direct defiance of that empty place.

I used to be a rather disorganized animal. Ask my Mom. My room, my projects, my movement through time caused ripples and a wake of "Amber was here" head shaking.

After that, I had to learn to knit all sorts of incongruous pieces together by means of strict logic and ruthless compartmentalization. Keep the angry away from the hopeless. File that scent under "black hole." Copy and paste little bits of happy, string together silver linings, and move forward.

Fast forward fifteen years. I'm organized. I'm stitched back together on the inside and glowing white hot in the energy department. All the little things you find in offices in the drawers make me feel better because they are all about holding things together, separating other things, and knowing where it all fits.

I've got some wild scars and I think they look great.

Just a Small Town Girl

My fridge thrusts this note at me daily.

I tell it, "I know, I know," and carry on, yanking the door open and fetching out whatever tidbit has brought me back to the rather judgemental appliance.

Every time I take something out, this little reminder points out that whatever resources I do have, whether they be in the icebox or in my bank, are dwindling. Giving the fridge a stern look doesn't change its face or minimize the thought, but I keep trying.

Stern looks rarely change anything, but I'm good at them. Usually, the look is directed at myself. Unfortunately, I can't see it so I just feel it creep inward, scorning and shaming as it goes. Fortunately, I'm also very good at shrugging my own accusations off as the overly harsh and non-helpful things that they are. There's balance in that somewhere.

It's funny, really, having grown up in this town that seems to pride itself in harsh judgement, that I would feel the need to further belittle myself. Believe me, the town does plenty of weighing by factors I don't believe are all that useful. I really don't need to add to that.

The last couple of years has been a lesson in discomfort. I learned that my little town's hierarchy classifies Divorced Woman as lower than Just Plain Mean Person and Falsely Proud Guy. That seems completely backwards to me. I've also learned that by becoming Divorced Woman (with no partner in sight, I might add), I have automatically fallen into the category that gets cold shoulders, arched eyebrows and chilly smiles from a good portion of women around me. I am now suspect. Unclean, maybe? I'm not sure. I haven't helped my situation as I refuse to discuss my private circumstances, thereby feeding the machine that produces sympathy. Minus a select few folks, the people who "know" about my divorce have come to their conclusions fully without my input. I've heard enough now to know that the other party involved in this had a pretty good run with the sympathy machine. I learned that I'm a whore and a slut and our kid might not even be his.

I am? He might not? Seriously? Wow. Glad someone told me all this. Glad multiple people over the course of a couple of years have done me a favour by telling me what they've heard. "You know, it's what I heard." Must be true, then. Good to know. I tell you what; it's really difficult to be a slut when you are faithfully married... which I was. It's also difficult to conceive a child that doesn't belong to your husband when he's the only man you've been with in years. Daaaaamn, I'm talented AND wicked! Also magical. I wonder if there's employment opportunities in this?

I try and tell that note on the fridge that in my insistence on remaining honourable (to myself) by keeping my private life (past and present) private has helped to burn bridges I never even knew were there. I have enemies in people I've never met. I try and explain that it is really difficult to get a job when places you apply to are owned by friends of friends of the wronged person. The fridge doesn't care. It just wants to know how I'm going to provide for it.

I wish I knew.

Meanwhile, I am getting really familiar with Job Service. And one of these days, I'll be able to take that note off my fridge... even if it is to cover it up with a Burger King uniform.

Do you want fries with that?

Angry Birds

I admit that I am not posting this from the kitchen. I also admit to thinking, sometimes plotting, and acting without the direction of anyone else.

In light of the most recent broken wave of gender oppression in America, I guess I have to finally stand up and yell... or blog, as it were, how this feels to me.

The rash of bills being passed by individual states regulating abortion doesn't surprise me. This is, after all, quite a passion-filled subject. We're talking about right and wrong as defined by those who follow various teachings in the Bible. Spiritual good and spiritual evil. This will always be a very loaded, very touchy subject for a whole lot of folks. Why? Because it is about the intangible, faith, and we were taught our ways from day one of our lives. Faith, or lack thereof, is a part of each person's very framework.

What does surprise me, also offends me, is the resurgence of Inquisition type belief in needing to either convert or cleanse the surrounding population. To this, I say you (you being anyone who decides that it is alright to legislate against my  values in a hurtful way) are not welcome and it is now my duty to make this as difficult and uncomfortable for you as I can because I do not believe in you and you are hurting me.

Who are these people of both genders (but whom are currently predominantly white men) who sit with an obligation in hallowed spaces to represent the people fairly and equitably and decide to turn that obligation into an opportunity to force and oppress? And what the hell is the end product supposed to be? Am I understanding correctly that there are people out there who would see me crucified for my different beliefs? Yes. I see the words "This is a Christian Nation; if you don't like it, get out" paired violently with "kill the atheists and let God sort 'em out." Seriously? No, really. Do you really mean to tell me that you would, indeed, stand in a circle around the sinner and pick up those stones and hurl them with rage and hatred until that person died of internal hemorrhaging? In a fervor, I see those people saying that Yes, they would do that. In the name of God.

I am appalled at those people who would dare say they are good Christian folk while picking up those stones and preparing to hurl them. You are not of Christ. You are misguided in the worst of ways. I've gotten in trouble so many times for "taking the Lord's name in vain" simply by speaking a name in a frustrated or angry sort of way. Has it occurred to these people that acting in intolerance while saying they are acting in the name of God is the true meaning of using His name in vain?

Another thing... quoting Old Testament scripture extolling the virtues of a wrathful God and acting on those edicts while claiming a Christian faith is beyond hypocrisy. That's just plain bullshit, as Jesus himself said (with far less vulgarity, I'm sure). You are Christian? Did Christ Himself not tell you that you needed to know only two things in life? Let me remind you what those two things were: Honour Thy Father (God) and honour everyone as the children of thy father, As Thy Father Himself. You do harm to others, you're doing harm to God. Simple as that. Even in Old Testament terms, doing harm towards God is the biggest no-no.

How does this all relate to the "war on women" in America right now? It relates as an undercurrent, a glowing angry thread through a very complex tapestry of society. It takes all kinds of thinking to reveal how to live with one another. If you must make it all black and white, then you must be willing to leave the group entirely. Only in solitude will any individual find complete agreement with their beliefs and values. Think about it. We can't even agree how to arrange living room furniture; something that makes little impact on daily survival, let alone the word of God or whether there is a God. That thread, that insistence on a single set of beliefs come hell or high water, is setting up a resonance of agitation. And, as we're people, agitation causes that fight or flight feeling... which in turn means identifying an enemy. Then you know what you're supposed to be either running from or battling.

So, who is the enemy? Apparently, whomever disagrees with your point of view if I am to believe what our so very sensational media would tell us. It just depends on which channel you subscribe to.   Unfortunately, no matter who this anger is directed at, the consequences are falling heavily on my gender (for the moment) in the form of dismissal and control.

Limiting the discussion to the opposition of abortion (for the sake of a blog entry as opposed to a book), I'm forced to look at this from my gender's point of view instead of my individual point of view. Putting legal limitations on procreation (or the choice not to) and the like, you are naturally excluding men from the direct physical consequences of these laws. Why? Because men do not have babies.

Now we're in the territory of making legislation for only one sex. It affects only a portion of the population, it binds only a portion of the population... sure looks like discrimination to me. When the laws of the land get all tangled up in the laws of religions, things get dangerously close to allowing glaring instances of discrimination. This is happening now. And the ones paying for it? Women.

I certainly do not know how to reconcile the abortion debate entirely. My only recommendation is to understand that all people will not agree and thus we must compromise in some way. Here's the fun part: in a solid compromise, everyone loses a little in order to gain a lot. And oh boy do people hate to lose and give up! But when one part of this discussion, that is an entire gender, is losing far more rights and dignity than the other, the compromise is a failure.

I guess it has to come down to this: the selfish, self-serving behaviour that allows for intolerance with harmful action has got to stop. True, we cannot make everyone realize that, but if we can recognize selfish behaviours, we can minimize them as a society. If someone is pulling selfish behaviour on you, call 'em on it! They might be so accustomed to looking only within their circle that they don't even realize they're doing it. It's likely they're going to throw a small tantrum. That's when you get to walk away and let them come to the realization on their own. Conversely, look at your actions. Find the overly selfish bits and get over them. Worry about your own troubles. Decide not to have an abortion for yourself, decide that some people may just be going to Hell and understand that it is not your place to make that happen or create some of it for them right here on Earth.

Also, know that if you keep being a secular control freak, you're going to keep running into people like me and it's only going to get less pleasant from here on out. After all, we're Godless monsters. You never know what wicked, underhanded thing we'll do next.

Not Entirely Heroic

I've been thinking about super powers in real life. I call mine compassion, but I'm sure that like all powers, super powers cannot be reduced to a single cause or use. Within compassion is the ability to protect one's self by withstanding the pressure of experience on the emotional heart. Depending upon how well you know me, you'll figure out that I don't fall down too easy.

For such a long time, people could hurt me deeply with words. I don't know why I didn't fit in, I don't know what made me feel like a flamingo in a crowd of penguins, it just was that way for me. Fortunately, I didn't realize I was such an odd bird until right before I realized I was thrilled not to be the same. I had the usual couple of years in my teens where shit was just wrong and awful most of the time inside my little body. Every day was another day that another friend might decide that I was just too (weird odd pale poor smart ugly skinny uncool) whatever and would announce that we were not friends. It's pretty cute in retrospect. It was another wave of darkness back in the day full of rampant darkness. Ohhhh, the drama. Yes, sounds about like every other teen in North America.

Around the same time I realized I liked to be so different, I learned a little bit about my powers of compassion. They came with a nifty set of intuitive skills, body language reader included. Let me show you how it worked...

I took classes pretty seriously in school. Class was the place I dominated without competing. There were people with better grades and better test scores than me. Cool and kudos! I was amused by the occasional individual who really wanted to make it a "You and Me. On the playground by the swing after school. I'm gonna kick your ass." sort of battle of the numbers. A typical exchange could go like this:

"I got a bazillion on my blah-blah test," says Whoever J. Hoover.
"Awesome. That's a perfect score, right," says Me.
"Yeah."

This is when Whoever J will show me everything a person doesn't want anyone to know.  As I have learned since, this is the typical stance of the Professional Academian* as well. For all you learning and learned folks out there, I am about to show you how to never be ashamed of your intellect and how obvious it is when you bullshit with intent to create a submissive of another person.

Whoever  J. Hoover starts on the slow, self-satisfied smile.

Even if  people actually communicated with word bubbles floating in air above them, they couldn't be more readable than Whoever J.

Whoever then does the Pause and Gloat. It's simply a "let me give you a moment to feel the pain of not being me" look.

Here's what I was/am supposed to do: either return a look of bitter grief, one of seething envy, or just a show of my subordinate stature. It's so expected that I will do one of these things that Whoever J waits just a bit longer than is theatrically appropriate. It becomes an awkward pause with the weight on them for the wait on me. I do nothing but maintain a neutral gaze. (that neutral bit is important... it makes Whoever have to assume things)

Pause and Gloat becomes pause, gloat, pause. You can't follow gloat with pause, it takes the authority and pomp right out of it. In fact, it transforms it into what looks exactly like lack of confidence. It looks exactly like it because that's exactly what it is. The reason Whoever needs to lord whatever over non-competitive Me is they really must be feeling small and afraid. Whoever has just showed how desperately in need of approval they are; I just got a naked look at Whoever's biggest fear.

For my part, I choose to not follow the script. I keep pissing people off with this attitude, it seems. Not only do I realize that everyone deep down is afraid, therefore none of us have to feel small, I take it a step further and let Whoever see that I know. This seems to be incredibly uncomfortable for Whoever. Best part of it all? If Whoever hadn't come over to make Me feel small, they wouldn't be walking away feeling even smaller.

It worked when I was the smallest, most frightened, most in need of gentleness... So I know you can bluff it until your real confidence (the kind you get from experience) kicks in.

The world doesn't need any more arrogance, but it surely would be a good thing if people had more confidence. Whoever, wherever you are, when you stop trying to make people feel smaller than you feel, things are going to be okay. For those of you who are tired of feeling small, look for  those awkward pauses and see if they aren't a good place to see Whoever's soft spot. Try not to exploit it in anything but self defense, please. If you do use it improperly, it's not a super power any more. It's just assholishness.

Don't make me show you your weak points. That's my least favourite part of the super powers gig. The cape? The cape is my favourite.




*Professional Academians as defined by Me: Those jerks that somehow scraped by in school despite having a serious lack of heart and managed to get a professorship in a dusty corner somewhere... wherein they make you buy all their books (six per damned semester) at god-awful prices and can ruin your life by misdirecting your advisor, sleeping with your boyfriend/girlfriend, endlessly quoting Neitzsche or Kant or friggin' Charles Dickens, and generally being sleazy. Pickup truck covered in cow horns (mirrored!) included. This definition may or may not be one hell of an amalgamation of people I once knew.

Of Chaos and Empathy

Sometimes, I get the feeling that the whole cosmic scheme is more of a game than anything borne of fractals and chaos. I suppose that is simply my limited perception, my view of existence through perpetually anthropomorphic thoughts. Still, this comedy of errors we all play in is quite poignant in its convolutions.

Today is one of those days where the weight of existence sits directly at the back of my heart, dragging it down in gorgeous but messy streaks of watercolour emotion. One pigmented feeling seeps into another; sadness bleeds into anger, anger flows over resignation, resignation courses through hope.

Still, I do not stop. I guess I've taken it quite to heart that I am from pioneer stock. Keep moving, keep going, keep watching the horizon. When the storm is too big and the horizon blurs, watch your feet and take solace in the repetition of one foot in front of the other. When things get painful, I think of the bison in a blizzard. To stop moving is to die. Keep going, keep going, keep trudging, keep moving, keep going until the storm quits. I have yet to encounter the situation where I cannot keep going. Of course, times when the energy to move just isn't there, I've at least had the energy to scream into the wind and, by mercy or by chaos, someone has heard me each time.

I'm not at that point. I'm not in a blizzard, which is why I have the insight to actually write about the storm and what happens to the creatures in it. Today's struggle wholly involves my empathy for others.

First, know that my empathy is pissing me off. I'm looking at this quality of mine in a suspicious light, considering what it has done for and to me over my short history. Because I was compassionate, because I dared walk a mile in someone else's shoes, because I was kind... I am now badly burned and toothsome enough to make me an alien to myself. Diplomacy is now a carefully measured response to be examined and weighed and meted out with pinpoint accuracy. This, too, is foreign to me! Since when is a humane reaction something I have to labour at? How did its ease slip away from me and how did I let myself become so jaded?

Back to the empathy. Even in my scarred state, I'm still feeling an acute physical sense of *noise* in my heart when confronted by other people suffering. So now I'm feeling it, it is affecting me in the physical world, and I'm mentally rejecting it. Empathy without sympathy. Shit. That cannot be good.

See my difficulty?

I want to heal this rift. I'm sure it has everything to do with removing obstacles, properly examining motivations, learning new ways to deal with the information I have. Maybe this means therapy? Better yet, a vision quest. Tell you what, though... you cannot have vision quests when you're a parent. That shit has got to wait.

Huh. Guess I'm at another point where one of my tremendously energetic and bewildering enlightenments could come in handy.

Then again, maybe I can just get through this by moving ever forward. And with lots of coffee.