Thursday, July 21, 2016

Bryn Donovan - A New Blog I'm Reading

I am reading a blogger/writer, Bryn Donovan - "tell your stories, love your life."  I hope you will check her out, maybe even especially if you need some motivation to get busy and write.

Her latest blog was about how she confronted someone who was being offensive with a racist comment.  To confront is the courageous thing, the right thing, to do in order to be true to one's own values. To not confront that kind of rudeness, especially when the comment is so blatantly racist or misogynistic is cowardly, but for sure I've walked away from horrible comments from people who were being a jerk. Keeping the peace, I tell myself.

But then I realized, I can be a jerk, too.  And this is what I told Bryn:

Thank you for your candid reveal.  Your piece spoke to me, for sure, because I try really hard to be aware of when I'm caring too much what other people think and working hard to make sure they think the best of me.  One of my incidents happened when I hosted a book club/luncheon meeting at my house.  We had only met once before, so none of these ladies were friends yet, which probably made it worse - a friend would have told me to not try so hard.  But I did try - I made everything from scratch and worried that it would be great, and when I put it out for the five or six of them to come fill their plates, I said, "It's all homemade, you can be sure of that!"   No one commented on my stupid statement, and I realized in the silence that in fact we had met, as I said, at one other person's home and she had served quiches - two of them, and I'm sure they were supermarket quiches, and honestly very good.  I was being a jerk.  Who cares whether you make everything "homemade?"  How did that make the other hostess of book club feel?  When I think about it, I still feel ashamed of myself.  No matter how many times I have defended someone (President Obama comes to mind - the jokes that I heard about him made me seethe, and all I could say is that I didn't appreciate them, thank you) or  defended a race or an ethnicity or sexual orientation, I lost a point on this one. Sometimes being a jerk is just an off-hand comment you wish you hadn't said in your rush to impress or be accepted and liked.  It could mean we haven't let go of basing too much of our self-confidence upon what we imagine others think of us. I hope your locker room person really is  "working on herself," and I commend you for your part in her growth.

If anyone is reading this and you were either the jerk or in the company of the jerk who was being offensive, why don't you tell me how you handled the situation and how you feel about how you handled it.  It may not be an everyday event, but it happens, and usually we feel unprepared to know what to say.  Or, if you were the perpetrator, did you catch yourself?  Did you grow from what you did?  

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Death of a friend Part 2


Scroll down and Read Part I first or this won't make sense.
So, let me “finish” my girlfriend story.
When Kevin died, Caroline and I weren’t speaking, hadn’t in fact for about three years.  We had gotten into something by email and when she went into a rage she could be so destructive and abusive, I let her go.  Kevin wanted to get us back together and after all that time and hardly even remembering what we had argued about, we were in tentative talks to maybe do that.  Then he died.  I didn’t know it, of course, and we were in Gainesville that summer that we rented a little house near the campus for six weeks.  I don’t answer calls from unidentified numbers and I had gotten one from an unknown number, and then I got a call from someone asking me to call Caroline, which I wasn’t too keen to do without talking to Kevin first.  Somehow I ended up hearing from her neighbor I think that he had been killed, and I was so stunned and bereft that I wailed and cried and felt sorry for myself and then realized that she must be lost completely.  She was estranged from her oldest son (for all those reasons that we weren’t speaking), and Kevin wasn’t just her beloved son, he was her lifeline.  He lived about a half hour away and visited her weekly, picked up her medication for her, smoked a little pot with her, and talked with her in a way few people would believe.  They were so honest with each other! 
So, I went to the funeral.  She actually sent me the ticket and paid for my hotel room and bought me a tire when I blew mine out on the highway.  She could be so generous and loving and effusively lavish with praise as well.  No one in the world could tell you how wonderful and special you were better than she, and no one could cut you off at the knees and find your most vulnerable spot and exploit it like she could. I would believe her assessment:  I was wonderful and talented and brilliant and funny, and  I also took to heart when she told me I was narcissistic and insensitive, that she hated me and never wanted me in her life and to drop dead.  It was horrendous, her wrath.  Eventually, not only forgiving me (for what, I’m not sure, never was sure but decided to let it go for Kevin’s sake) she involved me in her life – she had no one else, remember?  I was a co-signer on her bank account and it was substantial because of Kevin’s life insurance monies, she consulted me on everything and finally came to south Florida and stayed in a nearby motel for two weeks before deciding to move to south Florida in spite of the fact that she had a son in Atlanta who had encouraged her to move near him, which made a lot more sense to me.  I didn’t want to be responsible for her and most of all, I didn’t want what I would get if she decided she was angry with me again, which of course happened in fairly short order.  And I was just so done.  She had told me to drop dead one time too many and I told her if she ended up in the hospital she could call me, but nothing short of absolute emergency.  And she angrily agreed and assured me she had “friends.”  People I could see would take advantage of her.  For all her brilliance, (genius I.Q.) she was so naïve about people.  If they told her they liked her, well they must, right? God.  
So time passed; I wrote my novels she had so strongly encouraged me to write and I even thought about taking them to her and leaving them on her door stoop but never did.  Then she called one day; I saw on my cell phone that it was her number and I just couldn’t bring myself to answer it and she left no message.  I got home and she had called the house, too and left no message.  A few months later Chris called me to tell me she had moved back to South Carolina – Greenville, where Kevin had lived – and that she had committed suicide.  Something about smothering.  I imagine a plastic bag but I can’t figure out what she did with her hands to keep them from trying to save herself.  She had always threatened suicide and even made a few attempts (at least that what she told me).  Finally, she had succeeded.  Her landlord found her and called Chris and he called me.  I will always regret my spinelessness at not picking up the damn phone.  Maybe she was saying she was leaving to go back to where she had been close to Kevin, maybe she was telling me she forgave me, maybe she was going to tell me to come get whatever I wanted of hers, maybe she was calling to tell me to go to hell, but I could have survived that,  couldn’t I?  Now I’ll never know what she was calling about.  Her silence is deafening.  In my whole life I have had wonderful friends, stable, some not so stable, sweet, concerned, encouraging friends.  But I never had a friend like her.  She just didn’t let me get away with anything.  Not a single, tiny  rationalization.  No chance to deceive myself with self-talk as long as she was around.  No lame excuses. We wrote long, long letters to each other as well as even using a tape recorder to “talk” letters that she had in a box that all went wherever her stuff, an entire apartment full of it, went because she “hired” some neighbors to bring it to her and of course they didn’t.  Just didn’t – everything she owned except what she must have been able to get into her car.  I don’t even know what happened to her cat, Missy.  She must have sat in that apartment in South Carolina feeling so lost and betrayed and alone.  She needed very strong medication for a severe back injury – narcotic strong – and apparently she couldn’t get it because she needed to get a new doctor, etc. etc.  Bureaucracy. 

 I ducked out.  I was a coward.  Just because I didn’t want her to hurt me again – as only she could do.  When someone you believe loves you and they turn on you and say horrible, hurtful things – things designed to hit in all your soft places, it’s hard to turn the other cheek and consider the source – she really was ill; I know that.  Probably Borderline Personality Disorder.  I had a few of them as clients when I was in practice and they were impossible.  They either loved you – you were the best – or they couldn’t believe you were supposed to be their therapist, you were so vile.  That was her to a tee.  So, I know.  I know.  But still.  Come on, what would it have cost me to answer the fucking phone?  Apparently whatever it was, I wasn’t willing to pay it.  Several people have encouraged me to let myself off the hook – you took enough, you had no reason to believe it wouldn’t have been more of the same, blah blah blah.  They are all well-meaning, I know.  They love me, after all.  But she would tell me the truth – I was a coward.  And she would be right.  I regret most the things I didn’t do over the things I actually did.  And that goes to the top of the list.  I ignored her call, and I don’t get another chance.  She died horribly, my friend.  I don’t believe in God or in heaven.  She did – she was sure she would see Kevin again.  I hope she was right.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Political angst

My high school graduating class has a dedicated person who will forward along to all of the over 200 graduates anything class members choose to share - except when one of us is soliciting funds for a charity or trying to sell something.  I think that's appropriate.  And most of us know not to get "political" even though some of the snarky comments are borderline.  

Anyway, someone posts a story from 1985, mind you, about a hometown ball field, (one he grew up playing on, and he's 75 years old now!) Seems it was in such bad shape, county commissioners were proposing it be closed. Thirty years ago! And my former classmate goes on a mini-rant about when the government gets involved in "anything dealing with kids they really mess it up."  I just wanted to scream.  Who the hell does he think builds, maintains, and staffs parks (for kids)? The government!  City, County, State, National government. When was the last time big business built a park for kids?  Are we living in alternate universes?  And besides, that park has been absorbed by a nearby school athletic association.  Not exactly unavailable to kids.  Arghhhh.

My dad was a disinterested worker bee for the U.S. Government for thirty years, and he retired to be continuously taken care of by the government for the rest of his life.  Multiple surgeries, hospital stays, etc. etc.  Not one thin dime out of his pocket.  

I walk into a doctor's office and get essentially free care; my husband's last surgery probably was over a hundred thousand dollars - not a penny from us.  Who do all the government haters think is taking care of them/going to take care of them forever?  Not capitalism, not free market economics, not major corporations. The government. 

Medicare was supposed to run out of money by 2016 - wait that's now, right? And the Affordable Care Act along with lower healthcare costs (lowest since 1960) allowed the trust fund to stabilize until 2030.  Hmmm.  But isn't that "Obama Care?" Give me strength.  


Who makes sure the air we breathe, the food we eat, the roads we drive on, and the water we drink are safe? Who employs law enforcement?  Does anyone really believe that private enterprise would do that?  I know there is waste, I know there is corruption, I know the system is fraught with problems and bloat, etc. but I would hate to try to exist watching  the lowest bidder provide all those services.

But that's just me.

Friday, January 1, 2016

Good stress. Bad Stress. All still stressful.



Stress level charts rate life events that cause stress and say that if one has several of these at one time, it exacerbates the stress considerably.  No one died, but I’ve had so many life changes lately that I have whiplash from trying to adjust to them all:
1. We moved from a one bedroom apartment in a senior citizen complex in south Florida within five minutes of every commercial establishment one could name, including good restaurants and conveniences galore to north-central Florida into a modest home on five acres of land in a small town with one restaurant and several antique stores.
2. We adopted a dog – very sweet but with some anxiety issues from former owners’ less than compassionate care.  A dog.  Nervous and insecure.  Haven’t had a dog for probably 15 years.
3. I’m getting fat.  At “home” I walked in a nearby park most mornings for twenty minutes or I swam in the heated condo pool, so I got exercise at least four days a week.  Now I stomp around on the five acres hoping to avoid a limb to trip on looking for snakes.  No cardio is involved.  
4. I quit my job (12 years at this one, but it was at the same place I had a 20 year career – that’s over 30 years in one location). I had money coming in from that job – “pin money” I spent without thinking about it.  I’m still doing that, but I don’t have the money coming in any longer.  I worry about that but don’t change my behavior.
5. I live 24-7 with my husband now.  I cook for him – and myself – and I eat too much. (See number 3).
6. I left the social contacts and friends from both the job and from being born and raised there.
7. I became a grandmother - a hands-on grandmother, babysitting two days a week.
8. I went from being four hours away from my grown kids to having them within minutes away.

The stress scale admits that some of the stressors in one’s life can be good things, happy things, and certainly some of mine are – actually most of them are, but they still create stress.  Change is difficult.

My life goal remains the same: Be kind, be engaged, and make a difference.

Or: No complaining, no criticizing, and no condemning.