Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept

So Mongolian Girl's comment got me thinking.

"Just a few nights ago I lay awake in bed in a state of insomnia brought on by remembering a horrid act I carried out when I was in my late teens. I was full of embarrassment, shame, self-loathing and regret as if it had just done it moments before."

I think we all have had a moment or seven that we regret, or wish we would have handled differently. Maybe we hurt someone else, maybe we hurt ourselves. So maybe you don't have to dig to the deepest cringe-worthy moment, it's up to you. But do you have a memory that hasn't entirely resolved itself? Or maybe you've worked through it but you still think about it. I think these would be interesting to read, and perhaps cathartic to write and read. I'm going to go work on mine.





This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck Jim

Junkie

Self-proclaimed sugar addict and self-help book junkie.

I suppose there are worse things to be. At twenty, I did not dream I would become the Old Mother who lived up the street chastising children for their candy consumption and then hoarding it all for herself. The one who walks gingerly while cats draw figure eights around her feet, drinking herbal tea, reading Charlotte Bronte and Byron Katie, smirking at the absurdity of the ignorant asses around her. No.

At twenty, I couldn't imagine feeling satisfied with my spreading hips. I couldn't fathom watching as my breasts quickly lose form and being comfortable with that.

There was never a moment where I could glimpse myself in the mirror and nod with pleasure-- if I was not built like the next spicy super model, that just would not do. I went to great lengths to starve myself-- thinner-- and berate myself-- smaller-- just so I could see the girl on the other side of the looking glass and not feel compelled to shatter her with my fist.

And yet somehow, without me knowing it, I grew up. The process must have happened so subtly that I didn't even notice the change.

Sometimes I surprise me.

Somewhere along the line of my experience, I became more turned on by making love than fucking. And somewhere in there, I quit hiding from my lover the pooch of my belly while on top of him. Somehow along the way, I began to look down at my flinging breasts and decided that they weren't so bad. Their loss of turbidity didn't knock me over nearly as much as I had imagined it would. And it startled me when the thought barreled through my mind, "This is me, this is perfect, and I love me precisely as I am."

The anorexic, the perfectionist, the self-hateful horrible bitch, these strangers whom I no longer cherished-- they were gone. When I realized this, it was a struggle. I panicked inside. Those girls who were me were missing, and I could not find them within... "Are they dead?" I asked myself, "Did they die painfully?"

This is the part where I flailed.

Eventually, though, the fervor with which I flung myself wildly and widely exhausted. For months, I think I curled up in a ball and slept. Life was too busy to wait for whomever I was now to make herself known. There were bills to pay, a degree to finish, and step-children to parent. There was a lover to quell and cats to feed and plants to water and a commute to drive. Too busy to notice that the larvae I was once had not died, but was hibernating. My body was my cocoon, whether I acknowledged it or not.

Only very recently did I begin to take note. Every self-help book I have picked up has begun to ring true, every day I feel less inclined to dress myself in a clown suit, and every time I see myself in the mirror without clothes on, I smile.

What we are not taught in high school is that who we are at the core will change. No, back then we were impermeable, impenetrable, and allowed to think that who we are then matters.

And that, my friends, is a crock of shit.

There are very few traces of who I was as a young adult in the woman I am now. I've shed the skins of an eating disorder, religious fever, and insecurity. Today, I become straightly giddy over chocolate, go out in public without doing my hair, without shaving my legs and armpits, without putting on makeup, and seek little approval from, well pretty much anybody. I unabashedly make reading suggestions of self-help books to my girlfriends who are struggling with shedding their own comfortable vices.

So I love sugar like a heroin addict loves getting high. I admit that being imperfect in the eyes of judgment is a perfectly sane place to be. But I do not scorn the me I was then. Without recalling who I was as a girl, I'd have little contrast to see how much I appreciate the growth read clearly within these now adult pages of my life.

Here's A Subject We Haven't Touched on Yet

Money.

Let me preface this by saying that I have never truly been in need of money. I've never been in danger of hunger or homelessness or anything of the like. I've wanted more, for sure. I've also never supported myself. I've always worked, but I married young and he's provided well.

I've also never spent more than I could afford and a tidy sum from every paycheck goes straight to the retirement account.

Which brings me to the train wrecks I see around me, people my age and younger, who have no handle on their finances whatsoever.

I work with a woman in her mid-40s. She has two young children and a husband. They also own a restaurant which, despite glowing mentions in the travel section of the New York Times, despite being named her favorite place in Nashville by Gwyneth Paltrow and despite being a favored haunt of the musicians in town, stays in the red.

The husband often goes weeks at a time without a paycheck and I watch my friend stress out more and more—taking out loans, telling her kids they can’t go to camp with their friends and wearing hideous plastic shoes.

The restaurant goes through one crisis after another. Last week it was a dead refrigerator. The husband goes to buy a new one, but, somehow, manages to buy a freezer instead. Or, as my friend put it—“they sold him a freezer instead of a refrigerator.” Another day of disruption while the fridge/freezer crisis is worked out.

All the while, his wife is carrying the financial load—providing the paycheck, the health insurance and the parenting since he works until late at night.

But she’s not blameless either—last week they threw a Halloween party for 50 adults and kids. They provided all the food, all the alcohol and pumpkins and carving kits for all the kids. I know their debt load has to enormous. Once she and I were going to the grocery store at lunch. She called her husband to ask if he’d “put that $35 in the bank.”

$35.

When’s the last time you worried over $35?

It infuriates me that she works her fingers to the bone while he indulges himself as this restraunteur/musician/foodie. She claims he can’t get a part-time job during the day because he has to be available for deliveries at the restaurant.

Bullshit.

This is a selfish man who uses his wife to keep his ego afloat.

MG Keeps Important Life Goal

I am not kidding when I tell you I sharted first thing this morning.

Just in case anyone is new around these here parts:
A shart is what happens when you think you're going to fart, but instead shit a little (or a lot, as the case may be) in your favorite (or old nasty granny) panties.

What the hell is going on around here? First 'The Elder' sharts, then I make a bunch of jokes about her shart (such as saying I'm changing her name to 'Sharta'), then I myself shart. It's as if I'm back in college living in the dorm and ending up with a menstrual cycle that was synchronized with the other four young women with whom I shared a room.

It's kind of like those stupid ass mother fuckers who cycle out here in the country. I don't know what they're doing, really. Training for some kind of future event? Competition? The Tour de France? Look, I'm tellin' ya, some of those fucker's asses are so big that their poor little triangle-shaped bike seats simply disappear in their butt crack. It's like watching a bunch of giant toads perched on lily pads with entire bicycles shoved up their asses. I regularly pray (or whatever that really, really, really hopeful thinking thing is that we Atheists do) they know toting an ass that size around behind them is never, ever going to win them a Tour de Anything.

Wait? Am I talking about menstrual cycles? Or how funny I think it looks when fat people ride racing bikes? Or sharting? Or what?

I think I'll stick with the analogy I'm attempting to draw between menstrual cycles and cyclist who are training for races.

(It should be noted that I hate the cyclists who are training for races when they do their training out here in the splendor of hillbillyville where I live.)

Have you ever watched, I mean seriously watched, cyclists who are training for a race? They ride single file and then take turns making little signals to each other to indicate that it is someone else's turn to take the lead. The person who is intended to take the lead bursts sideways out of the line, speeds up, and then eases into the front of the line to take over the lead.

Sometimes they signal with their hands, I've heard them yell signals, and sometimes it's as if they just know.

Seems to me this is a lot like women. Maybe not with their menstrual cycles exactly, but with who is going to take the lead. In the hard core women's circles I observed growing up there was a silent and intricate language that never stopped being spoken regarding who was doing what and who was in charge.

Having one's name on or off of a guest list could literally change a woman's entire life. Barely perceptible looks, glances and guttural noises could make or break a moment. Failing to send a thank you note (or one getting lost in the mail and never arriving at the home of the hostess) could end with doom, gloom and incessant questioning about a woman's ability to "care", "fit in" or "know better".

And, God forbid a woman didn't understand when she had been asked to lead. Missing, for any reason, the hand signal, spoken word, or written invitation to lead something (no matter how big or small), sealed a woman's fate in an irrevocable fashion. Even worse? Declining the invitation to lead. Only having a child or spouse being in the last days of a grotesque and terminal illness could, barely, save a woman from disdain should she deny the invitation to lead. Even then? It better be an illness that is difficult to pronounce and rare. And, the child or spouse better die on time, lest things linger on so long that other's become taxed by having to show care and concern for too long.

The decision to decline an invitation to lead due to work, child rearing, house cleaning or simple lack of interest? Really? You are only then admitting having a husband who cannot provide, lest you would not have to work, have at least one nanny, and be able to pay someone to clean your house. That thing about simple lack of interest? Just leave immediately. You are clearly not up to snuff for this kind of socializing.

I suppose it's the same with those fat assed people riding their bikes. I mean, if I was a cyclist in training and some fat ass was willing to shove a training bike up their ass and train, they better train to the point of being able to recognize the signal to lead. Otherwise? What's the point? Why sign up for something if you're not willing to be in it completely?

But, as Shakespeare said, there's a rub to this thing. I wouldn't cross the road to piss on a bunch of fat ass bike riders if they were on fire. I feel exactly the same way about those high-end, uptight, high class women's groups I observed when I was growing up. I just don't see the point in either one of them. What? I'm going to set the lofty goal of riding a bicycle for 100 miles in 100 degree weather? Or seeing if I can throw a little party with the cutest finger sandwiches ever?

I don't think so.

Of course, if I 'rub' a little deeper, I find that I'm truly enjoying the goal of keeping up with this blog to see if everyone starts cycling the same when it comes to sharting. If I think about that for too long it might make me feel funny. Feel all judgemental and everything about cyclists and uptight women's groups.

Naaaaaaaaaaaah. Not really. I think having a goal of synchronized sharting with a group of women I like is just fine.

I know I don't sound the least bit relaxed

This post is actually based on an email exchange I had with one of my feminist friends. She, recently pregnant after trying to conceive for a whopping month, upon learning that I was about to embark on in vitro treatment (see really lame ass backdrop story here), sent me this sage and never-before-heard advice (excuse me while I wipe the sarcasm off my screen):

"i have been thinking of you and Luisito and hope your treatment is going well... i was reading in one of my pregnancy books something that i found interesting and true. She was saying that she got pregnant after a stressful time and only when her body was able to relax. i would have to say the same thing, i got pregnant only after i turned in my dissertation and was finally able to lay around and do nothing and was stress free. i think that may be one key to conceive. well i hope this is helpful!"

I am fucking to the gills with women that have gotten pregnant within a few months of trying to conceive and pretty much anyone else that learns I have had trouble getting pregnant giving me conception advice especially as it regards 'relaxing' and to 'quit obsessing'. As you can see, they still offer this advice even after they learn that I am undergoing treatment, a decision that was gruelling to say the least and that has only come after several years of trying to conceive naturally and many sleepness nights trying to decide what the right thing to do is.

Over the past several years I have had ups and downs, high stress, low stress, been jobless, had great jobs, had my bank full of money, been broke, been at my highest, been at my lowest, been on vacation, and been in the day to day, had sex all the time, had sex infrequently, had sex on the right days and had sex on the wrong days, smoked, not smoked, gotten drunk sometimes, drunk very little, eaten healthy, eaten unhealthy and it just fucking hasn't happened. I know that common knowledge tells us that if I could only just relax and forget about it, it will happen. In fact, I'm fairly sure that it is advice that I myself have given to others at times. But having never gone through this you really have no idea how hard it is to hear it.

It's hard to hear because it basically makes me feel like I'm falling all the more deeper into a state of sadness and anger and isolation over my infertility because it is basically saying that the infertility -- a source of pain and turmoil in my life and in my marriage -- is essentially a problem that is within my own control and it is my own female hysteria that is to blame.

Just last week, my coworker, a woman in her late fifties who has never had children because she never could get pregnant, who in tears told me that her life has been empty without them advised me that I should cancel the in vitro treatment, and I should spend the money on a nice vacation and I'll see - if I could just properly relax I'd get pregnant. She was convinced that she herself never got pregnant because she was too devoted to her career and had put herself through too much stress to be able to get pregnant!

This whole process of infertility has been eye opening. It's allowing me to view yet another area where women are blamed and/or carry the bulk of the pain. We all know that women bear the brunt of the pregnancy, not to mention the bulk of the child rearing. But there are two areas that I was not acquainted with until I began to struggle with infertility that I began to realize it:

(1) the blame for the infertility that I described above, which literally EVERYONE comments on upon learning that you are having trouble conceiving, even your most die-hard feminist friends. EVERYONE knows someone who got pregnant just as soon as they went on vacation or just when they decided to give up, or just after they adopted a child or just after having their first in vitro baby. These urban legends which may be based on very real cases bleed through into our society's psyche and convince us somehow that seeking medical treatment is somehow unnecessary and is only for women who end up being incapable of controlling their obsessive minds. These stories pale all of the other stories of all of the couples who never conceive, who adopt, who seek treatment because they really need it, or because of male-factor infertility.

And (2) we also bear the brunt of planning for pregnancy (this case is entirely personal and maybe does not apply to any of you, but it certainly applies to me). We are the ones that are less likely to delve into our careers because even at 20, even though we aren't going to have a kid for 15 years still, we have in the back of our minds that we have to do something that is compatible with having a family. The worst part for me about dealing with infertility and coming to terms with the fact that I may never have children of my own was when Luisito and I contemplated having a childless life. We both decided, ok, it wouldn't be the end of the world, our lives would be a lot less complicated than our friends that have kids. But looking back at how I've spent the years and seeing all the paths I had not gone down because I didn't see them compatible with family life was excrutiatingly painful. You realize that you didn't get the family life or the career you were passionate about, you got some shitty assed in between bullshit that is altogether unsatisfying.

This post is a bit of a rant and I apologize for how unorganized my thoughts are, but I did need to vent a little. I also didn't edit this post because I'm really tired.

stfu stephen

(cross-posted from my personal blog)

"If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my fucking rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it."

Fry, 53, continues: "I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want," he said. "Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"

so sayeth mr. stephen fry. (and also here) now, i have no personal affection for mr fry, unlike much of britain. nor do i think as a public persona he is required to be infallible.

but i find his continued perpetuation of this stereotype of women as frigid to be insulting (and even potentially dangerous) for a few reasons:

a) it's just flat out archaic - what're we, in the 1950's?

b) he's a gay guy, speaking on something he knows nothing about

c) it insults women everywhere by implying that we only have sex either passively or manipulatively

d) the implicit passive role of women in sex is something we have fought long and hard to overcome - women have a right to their god-given built-in sexuality, including enjoyment, exploration and initiation of sex. reinforcing lazy stereotypes undermines that message, and diminishes the work of sex-positive feminism.

e) viewing women as undesiring, apathetic, or averse to sex *as part of their biological makeup* undermines the power and necessity of women's active, engaged, willing consent as part of sex.

and if society don't take women's "yeses" seriously - how do we expect them to take our "noes" seriously?!

women have enough messages out there about how they can't/shouldn't/mustn't enjoy sex. we don't need another clueless voice added to the chorus.

Emptiness

Look, listen, pay attention now.

This is important.

I just want everyone to know that I'm writing this post whilst hysterical with The Elder's previous post about shitting her pants at work and then saying she had to go without underwear all day and ended up with something she could only assume was diaper rash.

That's some funny shit right there. (Pun fully intended).

I'm changing The Elder's name to "Sharta" now that I know she shit herself. Especially since she reported she shit herself when she thought she was only going to fart. See? See how that works?

A fart that ends up being a shit is called a shart. Thus, my new friend Sharta. Kind of like Marta, but better.

But that's not what my post is about.

It's about going pee pee in my pants.

OK, no, wait - it's about having babies.

Except it's not about having babies.

Or, wait, no - it's about not having ever had a baby and still running into this pee pee in my pants thing.

Seriously, I thought the pee pee pants while laughing, sneezing, surprised, startled or otherwise momentarily out of control for one reason or another was an issue that landed in the camp of women who've had a baby or ten.

The first time I peed my pants as an adult doesn't count. I was 29-years-old and just tipped over the edge of a 5 story downhill run of a roller coaster in Dallas. I screamed like a 12-year-old girl, dug my fingernails into my poor friend who was screaming with his mouth open so wide that I thought we were going to discover his dentures embedded in the forehead of the man behind us when the ride ended, and promptly peed my pants.

Just a little.

When that 'just a little' thing happens, these are a few of the things I say.

1) Oh, I've peed, but not a full on pee.

2) Oops! Just a lil' spriggle.

2) Oh hell, should have told me your joke was going to be that good so I could have crossed my legs before I laughed.

(Yes, I know I put 1, 2, 2 when it should have been 1, 2, 3. But I'm getting to the depressing part and don't want to go back or I'll never write about it.)

The first time I pee peed in my pants (just a lil' spriggle, mind you) was a few summers ago on my porch. I was sitting around with a few friends and experienced some kind of half sneeze, half laugh, half cough.

(Yes, I realize 3 halves makes more than 1 whole, but I'm still continuing to type without going back, so deal, please, I really want to write this.)

I said, "Oh fuck! I just peed a little. Not a full on piss. Just a lil' spriggle."

My girlfriends laughed and said stuff like,

"Oh God! I've done that!"

"I have to cross my legs when I sneeze."

"I just kind of bear down over myself when I laugh really hard so I don't pee. The unintended consequence is that people think I think their jokes are so funny that I can't stand up straight because I'm laughing so hard."

I went inside and changed my panties and pants. Upon inspection, it really just just a lil' spriggle of pee.

On the way out the door I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I looked at myself in a way that I rarely do; with a deepness I cannot explain. Right into my own eyes. Not checking anything; hair, eyebrows, make-up. Just stopped in my tracks and staring.

"Childless."

It all came over me again. Childless me. I couldn't believe it was back. And this time I knew it was staying. That I wasn't going to get some kind of pass. That I was going to go back out onto my porch and look at my friends who reported also peeing their pants and keep thinking they do it because they have given birth.

When I was 35-years-old I was terribly alone and single. My personal life was a mess. And my proverbial biological clock was ticking so hard that it drove me to my knees. Literally. Down on my knees and kind of leaning, drooping, sagging against my bed crying. It was awful. I fucking hated everything about myself, my life, my ovaries and uterus.

I talked honestly about it with a friend. She had me write about all of the qualities a parent should have: Nurturing, tenderness, honesty, teacher, ability to ask for help, willingness to learn, acceptance, etc...

And then she told me to go carry out those qualities upon the world.

She actually said it that way. Or, well, this way, "Get up off yer fuckin' cryin' ass and quit acting like it's only people with babies who get to be nurturing, tender, honest and all of that shit. Shut the fuck up and go. You have those qualities already and have no right to keep them to yourself just because you don't have a baby. Go! Go take that shit out on the entire world!"

And I did.

I literally signed up to do volunteer work that exposed me to human beings, young and old, who needed the exact qualities a person needs to take care of a baby, or any other living human who cannot care for and defend him/herself. Since that time I've literally traveled the world doing this volunteer work. I've read countless pages of information to help me do this, written informational pamphlets and reports to help others do it, talked, presented, given, directed, negotiated, on and on and on with everything I've got to make the world a safe place for at least a few people. Probably more than a few, but most of them were so incapable of knowing they were being helped that I didn't get all wrapped up into being thanked. That's not why I was doing it anyway.

And then this past April rolled around and I started closing doors. I've got to be at home more. I can't be reading, writing, teaching, helping as much as I have been. There is a business to run that is one of my dreams and I want it to succeed. Doing both is impossible.

So, in February of 2011 my volunteerism at that level will end. And then I will be thinking more about never having had a child.

I dream of it; having a child. I always have a baby or a toddler that is mine. She is in my arms and looks just like me. Sometimes she is crying, others she is laughing, sleeping, simply resting herself in my arms. No matter what, she is happy. She is safe and I am always overcome with the bond she and I share and something inside of me that is fully capable of killing to keep her safe.

There are a million explanations I've given myself about why I've woken up with tears pooled in my eyes after one of those dreams. Allergies, not enough sleep, too much on my mind.

It's not that volunteerism didn't work, it's just that the hole inside of me is the size and shape of my child.

My days of menstruation are over. Menopause suddenly started and suddenly stopped for me when I was 39.

Today I'm just empty about it. Surrounded on the outside by reminders of what has never and will never be on the inside. It's as if all I can see is one billboard after the other filled with math equations and know I've never learned to count. As if I'm wanting to hug a tree but have never been shown what one is. As if the only thing I want for is sunshine on my face, but have been shoved into a dirty hole in the ground.

This time it won't pass until I'm into my 60's. I'm sure of it. Until then I will be doing this thing I do about wondering about adopting a child.

Don't try to talk me out of this emptiness. I want it. I want to want something this badly. I want to wake up crying about it, to be stopped dead in my tracks with my own reflection and have the world "childless" bear down on me.

There is nothing wrong with wanting something this badly. I will take it out on something. I will.