Bitches Be Communicatin'

Like all of my blog posts, you are just going to have to hear me out on this one. Today I am thinking about how women "dog" each other. By which I mean, we communicate in a way that is similar to how dogs communicate. Its interesting. Yes it is.

I did say hear me out, yes? Ok then.

So here is what I'm noticing. Women have a couple of forms of communication with other women in which they display classic canine behavior. One such example we'll call the Appeasement.

The Appeasement is typically found in the form of a flattering compliment about another woman's outfit, shoes, hair, jewelry, general overall style, sunglasses, you name it. This is our IN. This tactic is used when we want to make another woman feel relaxed and at ease, and even when we want to lift her status in reference to our own. We want her to know that she is looking good, that we approve of how she has styled herself, or that it appears she is losing weight. 

We do this for the same reason that dogs display appeasing or calming behaviors. It is a signal that we come in peace, that we are friendly, and sometimes even a display of discomfort and looking for a way to start conversation with someone we aren't as familiar with. Luckily we don't run over and sniff, then lick the other woman's mouth. So there is that. Score one for the chicks.

Another interesting communication behavior I notice with some women is the subtle notification that you are on shaky ground, and she would like to keep you there. This form of communication we will call the Warning.

The Warning can be expressed a number of ways, both verbally and non verbally. A common form of the Warning is one woman making a remark about another woman that is neither outright negative, but not positive either. It is a comment meant to make the other woman unsure, as the speaker herself is unsure and wants to convey that message. It can take the form of something like, "Oh, Darla, I didn't know you were into comics..thats...interesting." Accompanied by non verbals such as raised eyebrows and a body posture that moves away from the other woman, this is clearly a sign that she is not included and separate of the speaker. Moreover, the speaker is keeping her there. The signal is usually received and understood, creating a new relationship structure between the women.

Again, while this is better than baring our teeth, raising our head and ears and giving a low growl, it is not as obvious but just as effective. Our way of doing it bites underneath the skin, though. We are able to inject a sort of suspicious unease into the situation and therefore, into the other person, with the smooth movements of a practiced hater.

We can let you know you are about to cross an invisible line into your own personal hell and yet we are also able to diffuse a situation or put ourselves in good graces with people without even warming up a single neuron.

Is this inherent? Did we learn it? Perhaps watching, like when we saw our mothers putting on makeup, we imitated the behavior, not even understanding what we were doing. Can we teach other things the same way? I don't know about you, but this has me thinking. I want to see how I can change other people's behaviors by enacting rituals in their presence. I wonder how long it will be before I can get a man to scratch at his upper chest/shoulder like he is adjusting a bra strap, because I do that shit all the time.

Brimming with Shit

You GUYS!

I need a shrink. Or whatever politically correct version of a person who can hold the bowl and scrape the sides while I empty the contents of my bullshit addled brain into a bundt pan so we can eat my pineapple upside down crazy together.

Like today.

If you know someone good, feel free to pass along their info. I prefer to meet in person, as I believe my showered, gelled, manicured visage helps people to believe that the things falling out of my mouth like cows from the sky in a trailer park tornado are totally normal and then they will tell me that I can continue to express all of that to them. But you know, clinically, in a licensed therapist sort of way.

I can't share all of my insanity with people I know. First of all, they have put my station on their first button of the car radio and they know to tune me out as soon as this static starts up. Secondly, they have all heard different versions of my shit and they aren't even sure what to make of it anymore. They helpfully offer their time and companionship, solace and booze, but I need the real deal. With the booze. Do they have shrinks like that? Or is that only in 60's television shows? I'll get my bouffant hair and short dress on if you hand out whiskey. Ok that sounds like a different kind of show. But you understand.

I need someone with the capacity to own my very full brain for a moment, even if it is in pieces. I need a place to dump off all of my insecurity about how lame I am, my neurotic fears about strange distant people and places, and the fascination I have with string theory and the connectedness of all beings. And that person needs to LISTEN and not give me a 'diagnosis' or pills. I just need two hands that belong to another rational person who is used to listening to crap like this and will find my brand of it utterly charming.

At $200 an hour, I hope you can find me charming. Shit, for that kind of scratch I would wear that mini dress and listen to your bullshit.

Let's make this happen.

I Had No Idea

I had no idea...

That when I stood outside that salon, calling you over and over again desperate to figure out what just what had happened and to patch it back up with my kit...

The one I had built in haste long ago, the one made of half truths and bandages and sweet words of salve that I knew just how to apply in the way that they had always soothed your insecurities....

of what was to come after that.

I had no idea in that moment what was being ripped away from me, no idea of what I had lost, no idea how my life would go on without the crushing weight of your broken soul to carry.

I had no idea what went wrong ... I knew it was something I had said. It always was. Or the way I said it, of course. You had read into it that I was hesitant about a life with you. For once you were right.

I had no idea how far away you had gotten. I knew you moved to another state, but I couldn't see the divide that had happened in front of me. So I tried to keep driving up the hill that you created- all piled high out of self preservation tactics and the worst of you. I had a well worn road on that hill. This time there was no horizon in sight.

I had no idea how hard it would be to accept the end of you. To believe in a time and place that I had not allowed myself to look at, to expect more from life than what was left after pleasing you. To ask myself the hard questions about how this ever happened in the first place, who I was, what I wanted and how to get away.

I had no earthly way to conceive of both how easy and hard you would be to get over. Of all that I would have to appreciate ... simple things like having time to myself and not having to account for every action I took, not holding my breath when a bad mood would befall you and leave our house in shadows. Ones that were shaped like the independent person I used to be.

I had no idea how hard it would be to get sleep to return - to just lay down and let go. I had no idea how tight of a grip your memory still had around my neck. I chased the beautiful sleep back with my charms instead of wasting them anymore on you.

I had no idea what I lost that day. If I had known I would have laid it down long before. I had two hands full of my past and none left to welcome my future.

I had no idea what was to be gained. Returning to myself, I found more than I remembered and strength I didn't know I had left behind. I had been waiting for me all along.

I had no clue whatsoever that someone else's life was patiently waiting to come face to face with mine. I didn't know that their heartache and loss, their disillusion and pain, their confusion and rebuilding - was all being done to get them ready for who I was going to be for them and what they needed to be for me.

I had no idea that two shattered pieces of glass could be made into a beautiful diamond and that I would live in a place of both windows and mirrors, able to see out to what was and back to what had been.

I had no idea how great it would be when you came running to me for escape- wanting to go back to where things were, feeling unloved and sad, alone with your wife and child and your hollow heart. How wonderful the rush of vindication after so many years to tell you what you needed to hear for a long time, to remind you that your life was a result of your decisions and expressions of how you felt about yourself. That the reflection you saw was one you had made. That I wanted no part of what you were suggesting. That your wife undoubtedly deserved better.

I had no idea you would have the nerve to call again. Especially after she found you out. You wanted closure. You wanted to say nice things. You wanted me to think kindly upon my memories with you. I wanted to get off the phone, I had better things to do.

I had no idea how well I would sleep after that. I had no idea how much I would appreciate my life after I saw it through your eyes. I had no idea how important you would be to my life. I had no idea that the day I stood there frantically trying to fix you and you shut me out was the day my life truly began.

You Are Most Welcome

I try to keep  things at an even keel as much as possible. Lately I am on a teeter totter with my hands gripping my side of it, white knuckles bared against the barrage of bullshit that is getting piled on and off of the other side.

I have decided not to ride the wave that moves with the whims of incompetent and unintelligent people. I threw a  written Molotov cocktail into the situation, bringing fire to what was already simmering. Fire can be good. Fire can be cleansing. I feel better already.

There was just one thing I didn't include in the world's longest email to the world's most oblivious person: You are most welcome. Maybe it was that I had rage fueled vision and wasn't feeling magnanimous. Maybe I just had too many other things to say and couldn't fit it in. Or I just couldn't slip the words over the furious lump in my chest.

Today, they move like liquid fire.

You are welcome for the years of my life I altered without looking back. You are welcome for the daily care of your precious cargo. You are so welcome for each breakfast made, dish washed, shirt folded, blanket tucked, lunch packed, carpool driven, girl scout meeting held, craft created, hair brushed, appointment made, bill paid and dollar stretched.

Because you never had to.

You are welcome for each rule set, each tantrum settled, each fight with a grandmother who didn't see the need for grounding. You are welcome for each sports uniform, school clothes, camp payment, sleeping bag, bug spray, whistle, and worried last look when she would walk away, even if only for a few hours.

Because you never wanted to.

You are welcome for sleepless nights, fitful dreams, fear of  strangers, palpitation of the heart  in a  near-miss crash, glance to the backseat to see that she was still there, smiling, unaware. You are welcome for the embrace that held a crying child, scared, upset, unsure...when she didn't understand where you were. How to reach you. Why you wouldn't answer. You are welcome for the tears wiped, the ones she is careful to never show to you.

Because you had better things to do.

You are welcome for the vision I keep, the one of a 4 year old girl, playing with her dolls, acting out a comic book scene. Only in all of hers, there is a mother missing. One that will come and save the princess. Or that needs saving and the superhero always finds her to reunite with her little girl. You are welcome for the heart I broke watching that scene play out over and over.

You are welcome for the tears I held back when she asked if I would come play the game along with her. Of course I did, as I knew the script and I knew my part. I was always two people in the scene- the villain and the hero. I had to play those two so that her little voice could be both mother and daughter, one in peril and one desperate to help. I took the role of both the person who would do such a thing as take the mother away, and the one who would help to bring her back. She took the role of a little girl trying to come to terms with her life, and deciding that something dangerous and awful must be the only reason you couldn't be with her. I've always said how smart she is.

Because you were in a danger of your own making.

You are welcome for my cordial manner, my professionalism and my lack of emotion when in your presence. You are even more welcome for the fact that I have never spoken ill of you, I do not answer for your decisions, and I have covered for you this last nine years. You are welcome for the distraction we have provided from your antics, situations, lies and inconsistency. But the veil has fallen and my mouth has dropped open. Likely in awe of how stupid you must be and how stupid you must think I am. Uterine cancer? Just stop already.

Because you don't seem to know who you are dealing with.

You are welcome for my protection, my intelligence and power. You are welcome for my education, my ideals and my income. You are welcome for my health, my sense of self and my standards.

Because I will use them to protect what I love. And to keep you firmly in your place.

A Letter I Can't Send

I can write you a letter

I'll make it so you can see

I'll write it so things look better

And hope that you never read


I don't want to show you

I'm not sure I can go there

I don't think I can take it

The pitying stare


I've written these letters

They never go out

They hold all the secrets

And fill me with doubt


How will you see me

When you really can see

What will you think then

What will it mean?


When you see what I'm made of

When you know what I am

The dark steals the light

And it's all that I am


When the curtain is lifted

And I step on the stage

You'll know what was missing

You'll know my real name

Spiral

If you have ever lived in the fear-shame-hate-disgust tail-chasing spiral that is a seething depression, you know that there are moments of despair.

Moments where you are not sure if you ever lived outside of the spiral, you start to think maybe you were born there. Maybe this is where  you will die. These moments wrap around you like a blanket but with all the comfort of a cactus. Once the needles settle in, the pain becomes normal. You get used to it. And you know that pulling them out would casue pain, whereas sitting where you are is the devil you know.

Sometimes, (if you are lost in the fog that is forgetting who you are), you stare off into space.

This can be one of the only useful things about a depression. Since you are devoid of the ability to track time, you can mosey through the spiral at your own pace. If there is a break in the action, you can always peek through the thinning layers and find yourself thinking about things the way a counselor might lead you to your own answers.

I thought to myself:

I am afraid.

What of? it asks.

Well, of not being good enough.

Good enough for what?

As good as others who have gone before me and who have done what I hope to do.

Why do you think they are better?

Because they got it done.

Maybe they were afraid.

Maybe. But they did it.

How?

Well they had more resources. They did it earlier, it was easier, cheaper.

So? You could make the changes and do the things necessary to make it happen. You are resourceful.

I just never have any time....Wait...well...because I fill it......with things...to busy myself...so I can't attempt this...because I am afraid to fail....

I shut that show down with the practiced hand of someone who knows just how dangerous that line of thinking can be. Its hard to keep pushing yourself up when the other half of you pulls down.

One of my arms rows the boat one direction and the other arm rows the opposite. The spiral stops sometimes, but only because I'm at war with myself. I can see the entire thing in action- I am afraid (fear) I am not good enough (shame) this is impossible (hate) Other people can do this and I can't (disgust). I can't face this kind of change (fear again). And around we go.

The taste of giving in must be what heroin feels like to an addict. It is desirable beyond compare. The reason I do not give in is that I cannot breathe, and I keep pulling up for air. Each time, it takes a bit more away from the grip. The spiral is not won with heroics, it is won with survival. If I could live without breathing, I would still perish.

Who Turned Out The Lights?

I want you to know that I am not well
But apathy is quiet so I cannot tell

I want to climb this hill, to scream and shout
Reclaim what I am (if I ever find out)

Someone has turned out the lights.

I am being  pulled into a well, I am trying to yell
But the words aren't coming and no one can help

There is an emptiness now where my thoughts used to live
There is a stranger living here - one that takes but won't give

Someone has turned out the lights.

I know this is not the way I used to be
I need to do something to make it leave

But now there's no pain, the agony is a memory
The dull is not an ache, more like a quiet melody

Someone has turned out the lights.

I think I like it here in the dark
I'll make it my home and give it my mark

It's more comfortable, really... I like it this way
Now leave the lights off, close the door. Go away

I have turned out the lights.