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A Legitimate Rape
August 21, 2012
— 3 Comments
This blog is a direct response to Rep. Todd Akin’s now famous and memed remarks of 8/19/12 regarding rape and pregnancy:
“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s (pregnancy) really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” The ire and attention his comments raised has been called by Republicans: a “reflect and redirect” strategy by Democrats; “instead of focusing on the REAL ISSUES of the election.”
I disagree. I think these ARE (some of) the real issues of this election. Concerns regarding women’s rights and experiences are bubbling to the surface for good reason; they are legitimate and important. For me, personally, “legitimate rape” has been an issue I’ve been exploring for the last decade.
Ten years ago, if you had asked me if I had ever been a victim of rape I would have told you, “No way!” But I know better now.
Perhaps it was the forced sexual encounter I experienced when I was seven years old that colored my later sexual experiences in such a way so as not to understand, to not see that sex should be completely and 100% consensual. Perhaps also, maybe, the ‘date rape education” of the 80s came to me too late. My brain was already filled with images of masked intruders and women screaming “RAPE” at the top of their lungs to understand that there was a gray area of rape. That you could be raped by people you knew. Even people you were attracted to.
How, I wondered, was it rape when I was too embarrassed and humiliated to scream, or to stop him or to interrupt him, or to even utter a word? Back then, in my pre-30 year old brain, it wasn’t rape. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t rape. It was just the way things were.
I feel differently now. I feel sex against your will is rape. No matter the circumstances. Do I bear a responsibility in what happened? Yes. Is that man still a rapist? Yes. Was what happened rape? Yes. Absolutely.
I’ve often thought about writing this blog to educate young men on some really simple ways to know if you are raping someone or not. I don’t mean that as snarky as it sounds, for truly I believe, some basic rules of sex might make things clearer to young men, and take the pressure off the scared, confused and insecure girl who wishes she could stand up for herself, rather than just submit, pray it is over soon and go home.
I lost my virginity to a rape. A boy I met at the beach, who I liked a lot, took me into a stranger’s house on the morning of the 2nd day of our acquaintance, and laid me down on a bare mattress. There was some heavy petting that progressed at amazing speed and within what seemed like seconds, he was inside of me. I think asking first is nice. Lesson #1.
The next time was that same destructive summer. On a whim, I allowed myself to be driven by a couple of boys, who I thought I knew well but didn’t, to a town several hours away from my home. When I got to their hometown, the boy I knew better disappeared with his car and his promise to drive me home. His friend invited me to tag along with him to a party. I was hopeless in my despair…how could I have gotten myself in this situation? so I drank quite a bit at the party. I was raped that night by at least 2 different guys. I woke up from my black-out several times in locations inside and outside of the house with some asshole pumping away above me. Lesson #2 – don’t fuck unconscious girls.
The next sexual phase of my life was a good one, with a loving, long-time boyfriend. However, one afternoon while we were expecting his parents to return back to the house, he grew impatient and badgered me for sex. I said no several times but he forced me to have sex with him anyway. This is the only experience of rape I ever accepted as such although it was with my sexual partner. Later that day, he and I talked about it and he took full responsibility for it and apologized. He apologized again when we met up some 20 years later. In fact it was the first thing he said to me. Lesson #3 is a chestnut but still true: No means no.
During my college years at Penn State, there were some loose sexual assaults on campus but nothing that would qualify as rape. The rape during my college years happened during a holiday visit home. I was playing cards with some longtime friends at a stranger’s parents’ house. This stranger who I will call Mike (his real name) and I seemed to be hitting it off while we played poker at a card table in the garage. He was really cute and all that jazz. After everyone left I stayed behind and we finished our beers and then he kissed me while I sat on the washing machine. Before I knew it, my bare back hit cold concrete. I can still vividly remember how my head conked on the stone-hard floor. He used his full weight to keep me pinned and took my jeans and underwear off. I told him no. I told him not yet. I thought about yelling but knew my friends were long gone. I begged him to wait. To slow down. To stop. It stopped soon enough. And he rolled off me, and said thanks, and laughed.
As I raced out of there, I chastised myself for what had happened. For putting myself in that position. For sending the wrong signals. I think now, in my heart, that voice was the abused seven year-old talking who didn’t know any better but to blame herself.
Now I think, I KNOW, I did nothing wrong. I believe with all conviction, that there is not a girl in the world who really wants her first sexual encounter with a man she likes to be on the oily floor of his parents’ garage. Her bare ass frostbite cold on the concrete of an empty house in winter. Lesson #4. No woman wants that.
I did not blame Mike at the time, in fact, I didn’t hardly remember the occurrence, until many years later while swapping stories with a girlfriend. Recounting one story led to another story and another and I realized I had many experiences with rape. All legitimate.
I think we all have something to learn from these experiences. I think it is damn important we do so. By sharing our stories, our fuck-ups, our misjudgments, we can help young men and women sort some of this stuff out, see the gray areas, find their voices, act with respect and patience, and do a lot less hurting of each other and a lot less damage in our culture. And calling a rape a rape is a step in that direction.
spiritual parenting explained. http://tm
April 5, 2012
spiritual parenting explained. http://tmblr.co/Z37ZbyIuqeSC
The Art in the Everyday Challenge
March 7, 2012
— 3 Comments
THE ART IN THE EVERYDAY CHALLENGE STARTS HERE.
Hey you!
Discontented mothers. Regimented wives. Whatever the male equivalent is. You! You, who’s never been to you. Let’s find ourselves. Let’s get expressive. Artistic even.
I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Click here and 
check out my “Art in the Everyday” board. In an effort to…keep up with me…see the art in the everyday…I have posted some photos that express my life. The idea is simple:
Capturing the small moments, striving to see the beauty in everything, the art in the everyday.
Please send me an email (thatsnotokay@earthlink.net) or a message through Pinterest and I will add you as a contributor to the board and then you can post your “art in the everyday” photos to inspire others. And best of all, YOU get the experience of seeing your life through a new lens and of creating art from your every day. You may even gain a new appreciation for your life and for your self as its creator. Or just post a photo and we’ll see where it leads…
A little background. I’ve been consciously honing what I consider my artistic identity for well over 5 years now. When I started writing again, after a hiatus I will refer to as “stretch marks,” I only had one day a week to write so I had to make that writing day matter. I could not waste time fiddling with doubt or bantering with the inner critic…I had to get words on the page! There were lots of little ways I defeated that time wasting crap, but one of the big ways was to convince myself that what I was doing MATTERED.
I mattered.
I was a writer. I would be read. I was an artist. I would be seen. What I had to express was important enough, relevant enough to fight for. I counted. I needed to master the craft of writing (a girl can try!) and that was going to be time well spent, god damnit. I HAD to consider myself a writer. I HAD to call myself an artist, cause no one else was.
To make art you need to observe. You need to listen, watch, record, reflect. This takes effort. This takes a limb and a person brave enough to walk out on it. You need to say, okay, this one time I will be a total narcissistic fuck and pretend everyone gives a shit and post this photo of daisies for all to see!
(((Insert inner voice screaming, “PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME!”)))
These days, I don’t sweat that uncomfortable skin-crawling feeling I get when I refer to myself as an artist. I don’t worry as much about people rejecting my material or judging me, but you might. You might not see yourself as an artist. You might not see yourself as someone worthy of hearing from. You might not see your world as something worthy of reporting from. But I challenge that idea. Literally…I’m challenging it.
Show me the Art in the Everyday. Your every day. It doesn’t have to be beautiful. Just something seen through your thoughtful eyes.
Again, email me or and ask me to add you to the contributors for the “Art in the Everyday” board. Before you know it, you’ll be posting!
Thanks in advance for playing!
Love,
erin
Shit My Kids Ruined – A Tribute
February 13, 2012
That’s NOT okay. The name of a web series and a blog and what I hear myself say all the time.
This video illustrates just that.
We all must walk the walk. No one gets out unscathed. Our stuff is no exception.
A Tribute to the Damage Kids Inflict from erin riley on Vimeo.
That’s Not Okay – a blog and a webisode – let me explain
February 10, 2012
Raising kids. It’s a mother of a job.
“That is not okay,” is the phrase for every mom trying to gently break it to her kids that they are ruining her life.
“That is not okay,” is what said mom thinks when she sees how far she’s drifted from shore. No land in sight.
“That’s Not Okay” is a webisode about a mom at the crossroads of (gag) middle age.
Susannah Dawson is a 33 year-old, SFV-living, SUV-driving, stay-at-home mom far from shore. She’s an anonymous blogger spilling the beans on her celebrity husband and her two children all over the Internet. And most important to our purposes, she’s BFF to three other stay-at-home moms: Annie (the difficult wild child), Candice (the smart, sexy one) and Meg (the perfect mother) all trying to keep it real.
Keeping it real is important.
Motherhood has been up on that pedestal for too long. It’s romanticized and criticized and homogenized.
But no more.
This is not your mother’s show on motherhood.
These moms were raised on the urban legend of bra burning as well as the promise of a new deal for women sponsored by Feminism. They graduated from college, went to grad school, moved across the country to L.A. where they became well respected in their field. They fell in love and married great men. Great men! Then they got pregnant. How wonderful. So…unexpected. But so wonderful!
This show is part blog, part best friend. You’re along for the ride.
You’re knocked up. You’re a breeder. Congratulations!
Without warning, your body becomes public property to well-meaning strangers who will pet you without asking.
And be warned: while pregnant and hereafter, your every parenting decision is open to scrutiny and judgment. Watch out especially for the prior generation. Hint: They think they nailed it.
You start to lose your brain. Literally.
You put down your reading group novel to read “What To Expect When You’re Expecting,” also known as ‘You’re Kid Is Going To Catch Something Horrible and Die.’
And yeah, it was probably that glass of Chardonnay you had, but whatever.
Pregnancy is called expecting. Expecting what exactly?
Expecting equal pay for equal work in your own household?
Think again.
Expecting to have great sex after the baby? Oh, baby. Expecting to have any sex after the baby? Come on.
Do you expect to have some time to yourself ever again? Do you expect you’ll recognize yourself in the mirror post-baby birth?
Let me tell it to you straight. Here’s “What You Didn’t Expect and Why Didn’t Anyone Fucking Tell Me?”
Each pregnancy ages you an extra seven years.
Your feet will grow an entire shoe size and they don’t, like, go back.
The skin on your stomach will never look normal. Forget about it. It will look like a torn-up box of tissues. Like oil shimmering in a pan before it burns. Forever.
That’s not okay, you say?
Listen.
Your vagajay might need stitches. STITCHES. It will not look normal after baby/miracle but it does recover a bit over time. Free advice: Don’t bother looking at if for a while and do NOT ask your husband to look to see “if it’s alright.” It is not all right and he does not want to see it.
And someday that baby you love and nurture and live for will learn to talk. And she will look at you with those eyes that are your eyes and she’ll say, “I hate you. You are ruining my life.”
In closing, say bye-bye to your dignity and social standing. You’re now a non-person. You don’t get Social Security or contribute to the GNP.
You’ve chosen to “opt out.”
You’re a stay-at-home mom at the opening of the 21st century. An enigma. Like that old-school telephone ring on the iPhone of life. You’re retro, baby-maker. A throwback.
Now what? The kids are growing up, going to school. You have a little more time on your hands. You see your friends going through it. You feel it. Ch-ch-ch-changes. You have a standing 5pm glass of wine/phone call with your girls while you “make dinner” and you ask each other: WTF?
Regrets? Yeah I’ve had a few.
Well, what now?
I mean, you’re not a housewife, are you?
And in the immortal words of the bagger at Trader Joe’s: “So…you’re a stay-at-home mom. What do you do all day?”
Let me show you.
Freeform Podcast: RambleCry<3Blog
February 7, 2012
I’m an erratic artist if you wanna know the truth. Although I am trying to go pro. And you “adapt” for the screen, not “translate.” Maybe free form podcasting and mom brain don’t exactly go together. Still, I love…
Listening is your only option:
Bl(ogR)eading: My Mind Field
February 7, 2012
“I’m here. And I loved me. And that was enough to make it through the night.”
Lay down my darling and listen up. Click this pretty blue link and listen to me read sweet nothings to you.
Or read it. Either way, I love you.
My Mind Field
So…four days ago my husband moved out of our house.
This is what I wanted. Freedom. A chance at joy. A time for growth and peace and healing. But this is not what I wanted. I want to be with him. I want to have a family. I want to have a future. I want a husband. I want HIM. I don’t want to be alone. I want to be curled up in his arms and to feel safe and loved. I want to love him. I want to shower him with love. But the truth is that there is no such vessel for my love. It’s a fantasy. I miss the best of my husband. I miss the house of cards which is the hope I have carried for over ten years. And I have watched that house crumble more times than I can count. So I’m a fool. So I’m in love. So I will always love him. And my love will float. With no place to land. With no chance of return. I know this but it still hurts. Man, hope is a gut buster.
I love my husband. Shit, I adore him. It seems impossible after everything. For I have hated him too. I have begged God to take the burden of living with him from me. And now that the burden is lifted I am floating somewhere between the fantasy, the dream of the life we were supposed to have together, and the memories of loss and despair and abandonment. It definitely sucks. I won’t kid you.
But, I am proud of me. Of the me who found the strength and courage to face the life I really had. It was nothing like the fantasy. It was not a dream. It was mostly a nightmare. It was a one-sided marriage. I carried all of it.
Yesterday I was remembering (because memories can safely come to me now) a time maybe a year and a half ago when my dh was raging for days on end. I was scared. Sad. Angry. Confused. Depressed. There really isn’t a word for it. I was frozen. Totally unsure of what to do, how to proceed, how to fix it. Helpless times a hundred. Anyway.
After the kids were asleep, my dh would rage for hours and then completely retreat and I would be left holding the emotional baggage. I couldn’t sleep. I would try to sleep on the couch. Sleeping in our bed was an impossible thought. I’d lie on couch wondering what am I doing here? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? On this couch. In this marriage. In this life. Hard to sleep. Go figure.
I’d grab my grandmother’s rosary and just pray. And try to pray a prayer that was empowering. I knew I couldn’t just pray to be saved anymore. The saving wasn’t coming. A miracle was not going to drop in my lap. Jesus wasn’t going to appear like a mirage in front of me and pat my hand and magically change my husband and my marriage and my life. But how could I do it? I couldn’t change him. I had grown to know that all too well. My love wasn’t enough for both of us. And my past, my babyhood abandonment, had left me with easy, victim-y excuses for my life during a dismal, dark night: I was un-loveable. There was something wrong with me. No one cared. No one loved me. No one could save me. NO ONE WAS COMING!
So I did small things. This was what I remembered. This is what I had pushed back. But I can tell you now.
I could only sleep for short spells on the couch. I had to get in my bed, despite the fact that my raging adored husband’s peaceful snoring was like a slap in the face. I needed to sleep in my soft bed with my special pillow and my white noise humming next to me. I had to sleep. I had children to care for. So I wrote myself notes. Simple notes on small squares of white scrap paper, folded and tucked under my pillow. The notes sometimes said: “You’ll be ok. This too shall pass. Tomorrow is coming. The sun will rise on you.”
Sometimes they were forceful: “You can get divorced. Fuck him. Hold on. This is your life. You get to decide.”
But most often they said this: “You are loved. I love you. I love you Erin. I see you. I hear you. You’re wonderful. You’re loved. I love you.”
I’d sleep with them under my pillow, along with my grandmother’s rosary, hoping their strength would imbue my sleeping mind, my dreams. If I woke during the dark, troubled night my hand would find the note’s soft crease and I would remember: I’m here. And I loved me. And that was enough to make it through the night.
Turns out though, that’s enough for always. For all nights. That’s all there is.
The next morning, I’d hastily jump out of bed and throw these notes away before the bed got made. I didn’t want my dh to see them. I don’t know why. I’ll tackle that next time. This is enough for now.
It is what it is.
No judgement. No good. No bad. It’s way too complicated for that.
Or is it just too simple for that?
Is it just life? Just humanity. Just breathing. Just loving. Just living.
Thank you Jesus. Cause you were there.
I know.
Cause I’m here.
Here I am.
I love you.
(Thursday, January 17, 2008)
Bl(ogR)eading: Eat, Pray, Love, Dance
February 7, 2012
— 1 Comment
“We PRAY. At the altar of ocean. At the ashram of sand.”
Your eyes are too pretty for mere reading. Your ears on the other hand…
And you can listen to an actual Dance Your Ass Off Party here:
http://erinriley.posterous.com/dont-stop-believing
Come to think of it your ears are pretty beautiful too.
Eat, Pray, Love, Dance
Some people need to go to Italy to Eat.
Some people need to go to India to Pray.
Some people need to go to Indonesia to Love.
But we just have to go out our own back door.
Cause here in “the Nuys” we got it all baby. And then some.
I was a 30-year-old pregnant girl when I walked into my first La Leche League meeting. Before my baby (Mollster!) was even born, I had attended many meetings. The instant camaraderie, mutual respect, empowerment of women, the love, friendship and support…it was un-like anything I’d ever experienced…from women anyway.
And now, 8 years later, I have at least thirty wonderful women in my life I consider MY FRIENDS. 15 of them showed up at my house on Friday night to shake their booties DOWN. It was freakin’ awesome. I love them dearly. I am their self-appointed social director and I am humbled to be so.
I didn’t invent any of this, but when I walked into that LLL meeting and I felt it. Well…I knew one thing.
I knew I wanted more of THAT.
I needed more of THAT.
And so I got it.
So we EAT.
At restaurants, that have liquor licenses. First Thursday of every month. Come in your jeans. Gussy up. Give it up. Gossip. How are the kids? Tell me what your man did last night. Order more drinks.
Tell me how fat you’re getting (you’re not).
Tell me how skinny you’re getting (size 6–shut UP).
Order dessert. Come on, we’ll share.
Tell us you’re pregnant, you’re not, you’re married, you’re not.
Come on, we’ll share.
We PRAY.
At the altar of ocean. At the ashram of sand. At the temple of sky. At the mosque of sun. At the church of friendship.
Beach Fridays every day of the summer and then some. Free Zuma. We’re claiming it for Van Nuys! You think the dolphin show is something until you see the moms fly ass over teacup into the surf frantically but with much aplomb pressing their children to “stay on their feet.”
The weather is always good over the heads of good friends.
Plus, it’s a magic beach. Magic to me because of our good friend JJ (hope you don’t mind, girl).
JJ was going through a divorce and the requisite financial crisis. She talked about, if not had decided on, moving herself and her two boys all the way back to Texas to be near her family.
I had her one morning in my kitchen and I could hear in her voice and see in her tired eyes that she had reached/hit despair.
Oof, despair. Oy.
In the hope of at least lessening her pain, I quickly asked the moms in our immediate group for a donation. She needed money now. There was rent and utilities to be paid and a dead beat, blah,blah,blah. She needed us.
In one day I raised $700! That’s a lot in our little part of the world.
I gave it to JJ at Zuma the next day and it was so moving.
I mean MOVING. The earth MOVED people.
She was touched, obviously, but also inspired, changed. It was moving.
She realized in that moment that she HAD family…RIGHT HERE.
She didn’t have to up-root her life there.
She had a life here.
The great thing about living like this…caring for each other without limitation, this total experience of friendship, this generosity that reaches out to take care of each other from a point of view of RESPONSIBILITY…is that we get to experience each other’s moments. When JJ realized that we were her family, we realized it too. Standing next to her I moved right along with her. Her reaction, a sigh, an exhale, pushed my heart around inside my chest. All around. I felt the strong bonds of family like the big roots of a tree, like the perpetual pull of the tides at Free Zuma Beach. By the simple act of giving.
So we LOVE.
We love our babies. We love breastfeeding and natural birth and making the best of situations that don’t always go our way. We love to push each other, to catch each other, to buoy, to banter, to cajole, to comfort, to laugh, to love each other.
We love our community, our world. We want to protect our children, our environment, all women’s rights, all human rights.
And we love each other. We are different, different, differerererererent women. We CHOOSE to love each other.
We live each other’s dreams.
I think this is something revolutionary.
I see it on Oprah sometimes. You know she gives these women cars, makeovers, shopping sprees, new kitchens, new houses and we, the women at home, not getting shit, are ecstatic for them! And I mean over the moon, crying tears of joy, clapping on the couch, you GO girlin’, like it is happening to us.
This is what we do. We really live each other’s dreams. And this is revolutionary, I think.
And now we DANCE.
We shake our hips, our shoulders, our tits, and our heads loose of the constraints of our everyday lives. We are sexy, free, funky and oh, so fabulous! We are mighty good at celebrating each other. I have so much to learn from these diverse, and between you and me, very dirty women. It is my humble desire that they continue to teach me and to dance with me.
I learned that fun is more contagious than the flu. (Watch out – it’s fun season.)
Black leather boots and Sinead O’Connor are still hot.
Back pain and blisters mean you tore it up last night.
I’m not the only one who needs more of this.
And I learned that when you are surrounded by friends, those women you love, adore, fetishize and cradle, you let everyone wear the hat.
How do you get some of this you ask?
Dream their dreams.
Be their family.
Share their dessert.
And let them give you lap dances.
Eat, Pray, Love, Dance with me,
Your Little Red Corvette
(Monday, March 10, 2008)
Bl(ogR)eading: A Somewhat Different Week
February 7, 2012
I’m unfazed and less than fucking impressed with sadness and despair.
You can read. No one’s doubting that. But how about today you just listen? Click here:
A Somewhat Different Week
Or feel the need to prove yourself:
A Somewhat Different Week
Got back in town late Monday night. (The trip was nice and the kids always have a great time, but trips are tiring and I was thrilled to be home.) Hit the ground running first thing Tuesday morning. Got home from dropping Molly off at school to find Andre (my foster son who left my house last year) in a police cruiser in cuffs. Six police cars had responded when his adopted “mother” and he got into a fist fight outside my house. I talked to the sergeant and spilled the whole story of him being removed from her custody and her violent tendencies, my restraining order against her. The police took Andre out of custody and out of cuffs thank God. They then asked ME if he could stay at my house. Did I not mention the RESTRAINING ORDER?
WTF????????
No, I’m sorry, but I don’t think so. Evidently my number is the only one listed under L.A. County Children Protective Services because criminally, they sent him home with her. He ran away immediately.
That was Tuesday.
Wednesday was my writing day which went very well. Very productive.
When I came home, Andre’s “mother” was outside my house again and yelled at me in front of my kids, breaking her restraining order. More calls to the police. Then I had mediation with the dh.
I was a half hour late due to terrible traffic. That’s 100 bucks down the drain. On the way there I was panicing as I was so late but also because something terrible was starting to happen in my gut.
Cramping. Cold sweats. Must. Keep. Driving.
If you take something huge and horrible, like, mmmm…my marriage say, and you force this huge, horrible thing through a small space, like a coffee grinder, and it’s so huge and the space so small that only a thin and vicious liquid can escape…that was what was happening inside my body.
I barely got into the mediator’s office where they were waiting for me. I had to immediately excuse myself to the tiny bathroom.
That feeling is unlike any other. My insides were suddenly trying to escape through the southern route. I only wanted to be alone with my God, begging for mercy, but instead I was at mediation. I was late. They were waiting for me. It was like hurrying through labor with someone you’re divorcing on the other side of the door asking, “Are you alright?”
Oh, the humanity!
I rolled my sweaty, tear-drenched face along the cool tile on the sink in front of me, one cheek and then the other, trying to comfort my soul. What is it with bathrooms and breakdowns?
I get myself in the room only to have my life, my marriage, reduced to a printout from a divorce software program. I hear my dh say he wants the kids half the time and I see myself fired from my job as mother. I keep crying and they stop and look at me.
“Are you alright?”
I continually excuse myself to allow a few more innards to grind into acid in the bathroom.
I do my trick where I picture my Jesus there. I see him sitting at the mediator’s desk chair, playing solitaire on his computer, giving me the thumbs up. I’m here, he says. Always here. And you’re doing fine.
When I hear the dismal financial picture, I envision huge piles of money falling all over the table.
My dh and the mediator view me skeptically. I’m not following along on the printouts…which I couldn’t understand anyway under the best of circumstances. I’m checked out, praying for this meeting to end.
Thursday.
I’m so tired. I still haven’t finished un-packing. I’m also a little depressed. JH invites me to the park with BC and then lunch and it’s nice to be out of the house and in their company.
BLT pizza at CPK. Life’s good.
I return home and see some stuff out of place in my bedroom. Weird stuff Ray doesn’t usually get into but that’s how kids are. One day they do something they’ve never done before. So I pick up the bedroom a little and since Ray’s napping I go into the office to work on my computer. Only thing is my computer’s not there.
It’s been stolen.
Someone has broken into my house.
I call the police. I call JH. I call AL. I wait for help.
I wait to breathe.
In the end, I lost my laptop (a month’s worth of writing), a couple diamond rings (my first ex’s wedding rings – how ironic considering I’ve posted about those, and a promise ring my present dh got me on our first year dating anniversary), two digital cameras and a stereo speaker…couple small things too. It’s all too weird to get into but the situation is all the more insane because the break-in was most likely at the hands of Andre or his “mother.” Freaky. Crazy. Not cool.
I must shout out to SV who dropped off a spare computer that very night so I could have e-mail and blog. Thanks chica. Thanks also to JH who babysat my daughter AGAIN (you are officially up for canonization) and for AL for giving up valuable super-hero party-planning hours sitting and drinking wine with me.
I feel on one side like this stuff is gone forever and there are huge inconveniences and financial issues with that.
Then on the other side, there are the desperate emotional implications. My computer was a friend. A lifeline. My ticket to freedom. My rings were important to me. The digital cameras held pictures from Christmas we’ll never have back.
Then there is the third side, the rarely viewed side, the metaphysical side, where I question my whole fucking life. What am I doing? Am I doing something wrong? I don’t feel like I am but, man, the present situation seems to be reflecting some messedupness. And it could be residual, maybe…but was I that messed up even a year ago? Or do things happen randomly and without meaning? If so why do look for meaning in anything??? Because that very night I found that my grandmother’s precious rosary was missing from my luggage. Most likely lost during an airport luggage search. There just can’t be meaning in that. And if there is, I don’t want to know it. I want the rosary back. I’ve slept with that thing for two years and I want it back.
But no.
These are the questions, this third side, this fucking doubt, that sticks in my craw the most.
Cause I feel alright. I feel okay. I feel taken care of and blessed and grateful. Now don’t get me wrong. I cry all the time. All the time. I rush sometimes to get myself alone. Be it in the car or at home in the back yard or in the shower just so I can break down for a minute.
But I still maintain that I’m on the right track.
Am I kidding myself? Can I trust myself? Is this an aneurysm I feel coming on??????
Friday.
JH and HL and I go to UCLA and hear Annie Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert be their totally hilarious, smart, crazy, cranky, alive selves and all is alright. There is a God. Annie said so. Faith is alive. Prayer is the best course. Crazy is a normal state of affairs for most of us alive enough to realize it.
I ride this razor edge between joy and a little shy of devestated every day. It’s been like this since December. Every day.
But joy wins out by a landslide.
And many of my tears feel like strangely happy tears. I laugh a lot when I get to reframe this shit with my friends (that includes you) and then it’s reframed forever. It gets posted on the joyful side of the ledger (my printout if you will) and there’s one more less thing on the side of devestation.
Maybe devestation is just a little pissed about that.
It will never win. I know that. And it can just keep falling short of its mission.
Because I’m unfazed and less than impressed with sadness and depression, shock, agression, resistance, self-consciousness and despair.
In fact, they can all just take a hike.
Might as well.
Cause I’m going to drive to the beach.
(Sunday, March 30, 2008)
Bl(ogR)eading: It Needs to Be Different
February 7, 2012
“For our sake and for the sake of future moms, we need to ease up.”
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It Needs To Be Different
My life is a big question mark and right next to the question mark is a big exclamation point. It’s all what if’s and man, I’m so fortunate and this is exciting but what am I doing’s.
Cause I don’t know how to do it. This.
How do I move into this new phase? What’s the end game? What’s the exit strategy for stay-at-home moms? And, of course, my specialty: newly single stay-at-home moms? Now my situation is not SO different. It just shines the light on this problem a little brighter. All stay-at-home moms ask at some point: what am I equipped to do? Who is going to help me do this? What do I want to do? Can I even risk asking if it’s possible? Is there any other way?
And the kicker in my case is that the financial need for a job has crash-landed with my absolute need to pursue my dream job right now.
And this on top of the fact that I’m still 100% a mother. That doesn’t change. I’m needed in all the same ways. My chores and all the expectations are all still there. Now though there is so much more to do and worry about and achieve. It’s hard not to be a little resentful. I sit on my back stoop and I wonder.
Am I less a mother, am I less maternal, because I am ready to move on? Was I misrepresenting myself all these years?
Can a woman be more or less maternal? Or is maternal just maternal?
Something we’re born with. No more negotiable than our femininity. We’re female; we’re feminine. We’re mothers; we’re maternal.
Mothers, and women in general, get pigeon-holed this way all the time. Like the old Victorian chestnuts of needing to be lady-like and of being careful not to act like a man. How can I NOT be lady-like? And unless I’m wearing a fake moustache, how can I be ACTING like a man?
Quite honestly, I’m more than over it.
The double standard was present in my marriage and it’s present outside of it. It’s presently holding me back.
There are precious few paths to follow out of the forest.
What have women done in the past? How have they managed? What was the path of my foremothers? My guess is that that knowledge, that wisdom, has just not been considered valuable enough information to be passed on. What mothers do is invisible, un-rewarded and not just that, but suffering from a bad stomachache from all the trips up and down the ivory tower. Hard to climb in these high heels and lady-like dresses and acting like it’s all no big deal.
Golly gee, we could do it with our eyes closed.
It’s not that easy. It’s not easy at all. For anyone.
It’s shit work. Pretending it’s anything less diminishes it. And saying out loud that it’s a shit job doesn’t tarnish it. A surgeon with his hands up all’n up someone’s colon has a shit job too. It’s still a lovely vocation.
To not really look at moms through the lens of reality is to not see mothers as individuals. We’re not all going to do this the same way. No one’s life looks like anyone else’s. Moms are all connected by sleepless nights and wiped butts and a true understanding of the word “sacrifice”, but we are all different. Even within our distinct mommy war bunkers. The breastfeeding mom still loses her temper and gives her kids Doritos. The mom who brings home KFC every night makes her kids washes behind her kids’s ears religiously and never swears in front of them. That PTA President who thought she’d be a natural mother cries in the night wondering if she’s failing her kids.
For our own selves and the sake of future moms, we need to ease up. No one’s perfect at this. And God, it’s hard.
I know men struggle with the nature of masculinity, but it’s different. To become a mother is to change forever and never return to that other person, and not just inside, but in society’s eyes. You must re-make yourself in the public eye.
I don’t always feel ready for my life to change. I like the old routine. It’s familiar. And most of the time, I do not want to be apart from my kids. But my life is changing, forcibly, in so many ways. The push-pull right now is my biggest complaint. My neck flared up as I wrote that. Can’t seem to get anything DONE and I know that everyone feel that way, but I feel in caps that there is SO MUCH AT STAKE.
The pressure is INTENSE. And all I wanna do is write and make my show. That’s all that drives me. I am pretty much unhappy if I’m doing anything else.
I know, right now and forever, that I will fail at every venture that resides outside the scope of my greatest dream.
If this does not work out for me, if I don’t achieve my dream which I should stop calling “my dream” cause it makes it sound unreal and it is, in fact, very much here…if my reality doesn’t soon, very soon, begin to resemble the picture in my head than there is nothing in this world I understand. Nothing would make sense. Right now, serializing my life is the only thing that makes sense. I want to sit down in front of my computer, walk on a film set, hunker down in an editing bay…and never leave.
(From Monday, January 11, 2010)
