Filling in the Gaps

Well, it seems I’ve had some inquiries about the pieces that are not written here. I don’t know whether I left them out because I thought I was writing only for me or out of embarrassment. Either way, some have told me they need gap-fillers to get the “why” behind what they are reading. Come to think of it, I think I need the “why,” too, so…. in a medium-sized nutshell:

In October of 2008, when I started toying with the idea of blogging, I was a 38 year old law school graduate working with a professional association as a liaison between the members and the public. I had just been promoted, just celebrated 3 years with a really kind and thoughtful partner, and was starting to get my health-issues – a chronic muscular disorder – somewhat under control. As soon as it was manageable, I would take the bar exam and start living a life. At least that’s what I remember telling myself.

Instead, by 2009, I felt like I was being set up to be pushed out of my job, my health worsened exponentially under the stress, and money was beginning to get extremely tight with the economy taking its toll on my spouse (“B”), working as an engineer’s technician, and his job hours. As one later entry reads, I was fired – or so I think – on June 12th later that year.

I held on to hope for a tiny bit. I stayed in my apartment in my town just sure I would get another job soon thereafter. I am a good worker. I go above and beyond. I have ideas and ambition. I take initiative. Seems those qualities are really only good on paper. My ambition only landed me on my ass out the door. I have never been out of work; much less let go without explanation. And yet I was angry; not scared or worried. I was, instead, bitter that I wasn’t given a chance to defend myself against the loss of my job. I expected more from a boss who is a lawyer. I guess knowing how to be unfair was his greatest leverage.

I lived off my severance and B’s 5-8 hours a week until the end of September when there simply wasn’t anymore left. My mother lived only 3 hours from me then, and when she offered for us to live in her guest house in exchange for taking care of her and her invalid husband while she recovered from pending shoulder surgery, I thought it was just the break I needed. What better arrangement? I could stay in the same state, have shelter while I continued to look for work, and by the time my mother recovered from her surgery and could resume her life, we could go back to living ours…. Right? My mother and I never did get along. Just because I had managed to spend some weekends with her without drawing blood did not translate into my being able to live next door – necessary or not. If only we were mindless robots who took orders without question. We moved in the first weekend in October and the day before Thanksgiving you found me lashing out at all my mother’s insults yet again. In retrospect, it wasn’t anything new. But a person can only take so many times of being called, “stupid,” “ugly,” and “lazy.” And those were her good days. Her drunken stupors every night added fuel to the fire and her lifestyle, in general, was hypocritical to the constant lectures she gave me about living healthily. I’m surprised I didn’t leave the morning after she fell trying to get into bed – so drunk she couldn’t manage to get square with the mattress – and finally falling like dead weight against the wall calling for my husband to come and pick her up. But I didn’t bolt; I stayed. I made every excuse for her behavior, and life went on the next morning starting with her barking orders to everyone as usual and ending with her passed out on the conch, half a glass of wine dangling from her hand.

The day B and I finally left it was over a box that B neglected to take to the county dump. The urgency with the garbage dump was the refuse the raccoons would get in, so when she came down a flight of stairs and sought me out to inquire whether I had told B about an empty cardboard box, I have to believe it was really only to start yet another argument. So he forgot to take the box. WTF? He couldn’t take it the next day? The next hour? I don’t rightly care what one's frustrations and difficulties are. No one has the right to throw barbs at another as a diversion to their unhappy existence. B got up every morning and by 7 am was showering, feeding, dressing and changing my step-father. In between, he was maintaining my mother’s yard, driving her to where she needed to go, and babysitting them both nightly at the local bar. And though we left in anger, considering it all, it was time. B wasn’t back 5 minutes when he heard me scream, “Get what you can put it the car; we’re leaving.” After an hour or so, we found ourselves staying locally – with our 5 cats - for the next couple days until I could devise a plan. The next week or so was spent calling friends who might have room for us, calling my father might have money to borrow, and returning once to grab as much as could fit into the back of 5x8 U-Haul trailer. I lost most of my books (leisure and professional), my clothes, my kitchenware and my furniture. Taking my father up on his offer to stay in his rental in California, we started west.

We’ve been here since December 9th or so and I’m still not sure where I’m at. I mean, geographically, I do. I’m in an even smaller town than where we just drove from. I’m where job prospects are just as grim and where the bar exam is harder 10-fold. I sit, day-to-day, on bed in an empty house looking for work or trying to figure out another plan. Some days I’m bitter, others I'm resentful. I am grateful not only that B is willing to do anything he can – even work maintenance at McDonald’s, 30 miles away at 5 am for minimum wage – but also for his patience with my constant “flip-outs” which are beginning to convince me more and more of nature over nurture. But *where* am I?

I’ll be 40 in 9 days and this is not what I envisioned it to be. Appropriately, there’s a movie playing in the background as I write this, and I just heard a character say, “If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans.”

Healing at the Dome

Today is my 2 wedding anniversary. Still broke, we weren’t going to be able to celebrate in our usual fashion. But “usual” hadn’t treated me well anyway. We are now in a new state with a new culture and now that I’m trying to learn to live with my own brand of faith, dinner and a show just didn’t seem the appropriate celebration anyway.

I had read about the Integratron not long after we had arrived here. Sometime after Christmas when I learned my dad and my step-mother, Debby, were spending New Years weekend away, I scoured the internet looking for something that Bruce and I could do. Something inexpensive that didn’t involve alcohol or karaoke preferably; those seemed to fall too close to the “usual” category – and not just for us, but for everyone celebrating and I’m trying real hard right now to find my own way. The Integratron might fit that bill. I was disappointed to learn their New Year’s Eve celebration had sold out, but am glad to have learned later that an encore presentation was scheduled for January 10, our anniversary weekend.

Following my discovery of faith, a “healing sonic session” seems just perfect. Not just for me, but for those around me as well. Events from the last year have done nothing but create a very angry me.

Faith by Maine Coon

In June, I lost my job. In October, I lost my home. In November, I lost my mother. Then in January, I lost my cat. It was a preventable loss, too; that’s what really gets under my skin. It was completely my fault! Because I’ve lost everything, I don’t have much to do really save sit on the bed with my laptop. I write, I read, I look for employment. Tiffany often jumps up here with me. And the new environment makes looking out the window very interesting for him. He loves the Desert Quail and the dried flora when either tumble in front of him. He perks up, ears front and paws at the glass before sticking his nose out the crack I have in the window to assist with a cool breeze. And if everything were this simple in my head, it likely would not have happened. If my head wasn’t cluttered with calling creditors; looking for jobs; worrying about my marriage because he’s a part of my mess, too; worrying about my health because it’s never been great; making lists of everything I’ve lost which needs replacing; clipping coupons to save on groceries; sucking up pride to ask for my father’s credit card every other day; and making sure I’m at his house on time because to do so otherwise is mildly insulting to him – if my mind weren’t in all of these places at once, I might have remembered to shut the window when I hurried away to shower so as to have enough time to visit my father, go to the store, and figure out how to make a semi-interesting dinner with only shredded cheese, hamburger and Bisquick. I might have realized that Tiffy, the Adventure Cat, was probably just sitting back, waiting for that moment that he knew would come when mommy wasn’t sitting guard to the doorway of Desert Land. It was 30 minutes later when I walked into the bedroom and saw the pillow I had been leaning against was pushed toward the window. As if something had weighted it down. I quickly yelled to Bruce that we needed to do a cat count. When only 4 were seen, I grabbed the bag of cat food and did the never-fail cat call – the bag shake. Still only 4. Knowing where Tiffany had leapt from, I decided to go outside to the bush nearest the window (well, not before quickly feeding the other 4 after the first bag shake. They didn’t understand the urgency of the situation and just sat there and looked at me with disdain when I didn’t immediately fill their bowls). No sign of him, and my heart sunk even further. It was getting close to the time to leave. I had 5 more minutes, and I spent every last second scouring every bush, every corner and crack that I thought this little fluffy troublemaker might be hiding in. Finally I hear Bruce say, “C’mon. Put on your shoes. We have to go.” Driving slowly down our street, looking frantically still, my eyes welled up making it even harder to see in the now much darkened neighborhood. Not feeling like cooking, we ditched the groceries and instead, waited until our scheduled visiting time sipping coffee at the local diner. 20 minutes of dishes clanking and little kids yelling and registers humming all amplified in my head. By now I had pretty much relegated myself to the knowledge that Tiffany would not make it. My knowledge of desert wildlife coupled with his personality left me certain that I had caused the slow death of my precious Tiffany. The coffee and soda were free as it turned out. I was quick to assume it was due to the slow service; Bruce, I see now, has more faith than I. Bruce believes it was because my red and swollen eyes and the lack of much conversation was all the incentive the waiter needed to help lessen whatever hurt I was obviously feeling. Off to dad’s, Bruce was kind to explain what had happened so they would wonder why I looked disheveled. In only an hour or so, I had ordered what I had needed to with dad's credit card, and Dad and Debby went over the expense sheet I had emailed to them earlier that day so we could all devise a plan to help us get back on our feet. I borrowed a flashlight and back we went to the house where my plan was to throw together a couple of sandwiches for Bruce so he could get to bed (he gets up at 3:30 for work), and then to don his Carhartt and skull cap and look beyond our property line for my cat. It wasn’t as easy as I had though it would be; even with a flashlight. A cup of food to shake in one hand, a flashlight in the other, and an axe handle cradled under my arm lest I run into any pack of wild dogs and coyotes commonplace around these parts. The light wasn’t nearly as diffuse as I had figured and others’ property lines were difficult to discern if there was no fence. The shadows created both by me and the moon made it seem like creatures were darting underneath my feet at every turn. Searching was a lost cause, so I decided to sleep in the back room next to the sliding glass door. I would leave it open enough so he wouldn’t have to paw at it and hope to entice him home with a pile of food placed just outside. As I sat there looking both at my reflection in the glass and for him outside, I began to think about the “why.” Why had I lost my job and why did my mom hate me enough to disown me? I could explain almost all of the horrible events of the previous year. I had a reason for why everything happened except this. This, I could not understand why, especially on top of everything else, why did I have to lose one more thing in my life? And I wasn’t meaning “how.” Yes, I screwed up and left the window open; that’s how. I wanted to know why. What lesson was I supposed to learn from this? He’s a cat. His behavior isn’t in my control. He didn’t have to jump out the window, and yet he did. Why? To teach me what? To show me what? And I replayed this question over and over. I analyzed it for 30 minutes as I lay, bundled up in jacket and blankets next to an open door hoping he would return. Hoping, but not confident. And then I thought about the difference between hope and faith. And because I could do little – nothing really – to influence whether he returned, I thought to myself, “if he does come back, maybe there is something out there.” When I heard Bruce come through the door not 5 minutes later, I thought he was just coming to check on me. But instead of stopping, he ran right past me into the freezing night with nothing on but his boxers. The tears that fell as Bruce brought Tiffany back into the house weren’t just joyous ones because a loved one had found his way home. They also fell because Tiffany told me to hang on and believe - there is something out there. AA

Starting Over... again

Today is Tuesday. I was fired last Friday. I'm still in a bit of shock. But at least I'm able to eat and drink now. I was surprised when I couldn't even keep down bread and water for almost 48 hours. I've been through some pretty rough times, but I've *never* reacted like that before. But that was last weekend and today is another day. I'm thinking more clearly now, and I'm certain what bothers me most is not that I was fired, but that I was given no explanation. I've focused my entire life on learning from my experiences and then educating others. Whether that education is in teaching people on how the law could help, or by giving hope and encouragement, my entire life has been a path clearing for the public good. To be fired for trying to do good is still unfathomable. Is it true that when one door closes another opens? If so, can I see what is behind that door before I enter? Only time will tell. For the moment though, I think it better if I don't make rash or quick decisions. It's only been two days. Yes, my credit score will drop. Yes, I will live off pasta for dinner more than once per week. Yes, I will not likely realize my dream to be stable before I turn 40. But I cannot believe that my life's path is to endure what I have endured only to return to living in my car. I studied for the LSAT by the light of the dashboard of my car. I finished law school. I started to make a dent in helping the less advantaged people of South Carolina. And yet today, Tuesday, June 16, 2009 I sit on my couch browsing job listings. There is an opportunity for me out there... an opportunity that utilizes my life experience and education to help people who are unable to help themselves. Be patient citizens. I will be back.

Poetry and Miniskirts

In retrospect, I think I felt I couldn’t start writing until I had a title. As if a title, somehow, legitimized what I have to say. I’ve spent a fair amount of time since then trying to “pick a topic.” Methodically, I thought often about those topics that I thought were both interesting enough to me to write about and had staying power. Books, film, art, food, reform, social justice, law, politics, pop culture, people, psychology, tragedy, animals, travel, media, medicine, beauty, nature, religion… writing suddenly became that sexy, black dress in my closet. You know the one – the one that turns heads and makes me feel gorgeous all at the same time. I love it, and yet half of the time I want to wear it, I don’t for fear that I will be misread. It’s time to not think and just do. Otherwise, I’ve got nothing to wear these great heals with.