Picking Up Napkins and Other Things That Upset the Applecart

Yesterday I was crossing the street and observed a gust of wind snatch up a bajillion Starbucks napkins, confetti-ing (read: littering) them along my path ahead. It was actually pretty for a minute, all those recycled-brown rectangles fluttering around airborne. But, like all wild things, it had to come to an end, and they became grounded.

I was then forced to make a choice: to leave them in my fast-paced wake or to stop and give Mother Earth a little nudge in the right direction.

You shoulda seen me dancing all over the road, alternating between hand plucking and foot-stomping the little buggers. After one multiple-stomp attempt to catch a single one (it mattered to THAT starfish), I earned a driver's reluctant grin (must've been a Charlie Chapman fan).

Do you ever get deep about napkins?

You bet your mother lovin napkins I do!

I immediately went down this thought train:

We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence... 



And then, it's converse, this:

We sometimes unnecesarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward...

What came to mind for that one was when we went to Disney Land this past Fall and did the right thing by arriving an hour ahead of the 4:00pm afternoon parade in order to reserve front-row seats on the street's curb. We thought it through. We planned accordingly. We did the work. As it were, there were two reasons for subsets of our party to leave and come back (#1 potty, #2 ice cream if you must know) prior to the parade's start and around the time the crowd was thickening.

Each time someone asked if the gaps left behind by our temporarily absent tooshes were available for the taking, I hated having to say NOPE.

Finally, I collapsed. A young family who had positioned themselves behind us (and whose kids - even standing up - would not be able to see well over our sitting-down bodies) seemed like the perfect peeps to squeeze into our space. I didn't swap our spots for theirs. Ours were just made smaller; we made room.

Even though our actions rightfully justified our initial place and theirs theirs.

Now, I am under no illusion that we are saints for having shared a parade-side curb at Disneyland with teensy children.

I mean, now that it's in print, it sounds a little more like just behaving like decent humans.

I mention this story - rather - because not everyone in our party was in agreement with this decision (based on body language exclusively) and, at the time, it got me thinking about the same thing the recent napkin moment did:

Much of the time, there is a thinner thread connecting cause and effect than we like to think.

Because, here's what we like to think about our human behavior:

Cause                                           thick solid line                                       Effect

Degree of Effort                          thick solid line                            Degree of Achievement

Degree of Work                           thick solid line                             Degree of Success

Action                                           thick solid line                                  Outcome


It's sorta a human thing, really.

It's why, if we're going down the Bible road (and you know I love me some Christian anecdotes), the dudes and dudettes (ok, it was just dudes... the Disciples as it were) who noticed the blind man drilled Jesus about what this man's parents one generation up had done such that God would make him sightless.

We Homo sapiens like to explain things. We like correlations. We like control. We like to know what to expect. We like certainty. We like concrete. We really, really love thick solid lines.

When I took statistics in college, I was fascinated by it. A layman's introduction to statistics is as follows: correlations between one set of data and another is rated by a "correlation coefficient," a value that ranges from negative one to one. If you're trying to connect two variables to one another (smoking and lung cancer, lets say, or exercise and heart disease), what you DON'T want is a 0. A correlation of zero means your research has led you to nada conclusions, you flunked. What you'd love is to get a -1 or a 1. A perfect negative correlation (as one variable increases, the other decreases or vice versa) or a perfect positive one (both variable increase/decrease in tandem).

But the truth in statistics and in life is that perfect correlations are fairly elusive.

Our role in this life: There is a thread. Oh, yes. There's a thread, a dotted line, a rational-clue-based scavenger hunt that makes all the junk that happens in life somehow connect to how we conduct ourselves. We set shit in motion, we do. Good luck, as they say, does follow hard work around. Human behavior matters.

Otherwise, every motivational poster made by humankind can be shredded. Coaches and teachers can retire. Total chaos would reign. Nothing would mean anything.

The best way to look at ourselves?

I say this: Recognize that most of where our participation in life meets life's actual play-out is, correlation coefficient speaking, about a ± 0.5.

This both ruffles the feathers of my self importance (i.e. pisses me off) and makes me feel completely and totally good (i.e. relieved).

I think we'd all be a lot more healthy if we viewed things with this ± 0.5 mentality. Cuz when I spend time with people operating under the ± 1.0 mentality, accompanying it seems to be a lot of harshness, their views towards people specifically. Actually, their views about their Source too. And, furthermore, most seem to be pretty on top of life at the time of this ± 1.0 mentality. (Goes something like this: I worked hard, I paid the price, I was responsible. This was earned.)

I ask this: Would a ± 1.0 type person pick up napkins that he didn't drop? Would she make room for someone who didn't do anything to receive it?

As a ± 0.5 thinker, I almost look for ways to make the apple cart teeter. It's fun-in-a-naughty way, really. When I find that space that's untouched by statistics...that space when it can go the expected way or not... that space where the element of surprise can affect the ho-hum assumptions about what is deserved or undeserved...

That space can be rather magical.

And here's how you know: People's response to it.

When the magic of grace fills a space that otherwise would be absolute, people show you the magic:

You get grins.

You get tense shoulders dropped.

You get laughter.

You get tight jaws loosened.

You get a glimpse of playfulness.

You get an actual affect, a change in the energy.


I call it good-will naughtiness...


We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence.

MAGIC

We sometimes unnecessarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward.

MAGIC

This magic is called good-will naughtiness... And I'd like for all of us to have a little more of it.

A Fall Tells It All

I’m gonna be real with ya.

I go in and out of periods of wellness like it’s going out of style.

And while I’ve never much cared for the hobby of sprinting after hot fashion trends, I’m like a police dog chasing after a scent when it comes to trying to figure out my own damn trends.

This sister’s mood is not the timeless black cocktail dress hanging central in the closet. Nor the reliable beige cardigan, wearing potential ceaseless.

I’d liken my wellness more to the wacky floral print that retires after a go or two, more the unconventional clearance buy that wisps in and out of the closet faster than you can say: "GOODWILL."

Wellness in my world, despite my tenuous efforts aimed to groom and maintain and guarantee it, shows up in aggravatingly finite stints.

(to peak in on one of my homegrown gimmicks to do just this, see my Tiered Support Plan here),

I’ve just exited a particular rough spell (called Summer 2018) and out of it came a new Litmus test I’d like to share.

It has to do with tripping and falling.

I’m staying literal here, so don’t go using your figurative imagination. Literal as in: actually physically tripping.

But first, I’ll convey with brevity my particular wellness-gone-south pattern:


                            **Level/Centered**

                         Stressed/Overwhelmed

            Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous

Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous + Insecure/Inner Doubt

These are the layers of my swirls. Your swhirl patten looks different, no doubt. Swirls aren’t supposed to have twins. My guess, despite this, is that you might repeatedly fall into yours the way I repeatedly fall into mine: without knowledge. Slippery, Sweepy, Off-Guard-Catching things, those swirls!!! They incrementally and slowly strike. Assholes.

My second guess is that, regardless of your swirl stages, you might be able to use the same Litmus test.

Back to that:

Tripping and falling.

Do you ever do it?

Early summer I tripped on the walk from the grocery store to my van. I caught myself - thank goodness no pavement contact. For a couple tenths of a second, though, it looked like I was going down. And my reaction was this: "Dang. I almost went down. Ha! I'm glad I didn't. Whoopsie!" Within a couple additional tenths of a second I most immediately got back to humming. I even caught the eye of someone approaching and said, "That was a close one, heh?"

End of summer - as the tripping gods would have it - I tripped in that same cockadoodee parking lot in the same cockadoodee spot. Nothing was more or less severe about this one than the inaugural trip two months previous. This time, however: "SON OF A BITCH. WHY AM I SUCH A KLUTZ? I AM AN IDIOT. WHO SAW THIS DISPLAY OF NON-GRACE?  HOW COME EVERYONE ELSE ISN'T SCREWING UP NEARLY AS MUCH AS I AM? STUPID! I'VE GOT TO BE BETTER." Insert an embarrassed blush, eyes averting from any passerby, a heart rate increase that extended well beyond what the momentary panic warranted, and an attitude of self-criticism that underpinned the whole thing and was supported by the whole thing.

I don't have to draw a line from my parking lot trip experiences to which swirl stage I was in each of these times.

I think you know.

One says, "Whoopsie" and one basically says "Son of a Bitch, you Stupid Klutz." Who knew a simple, benign act of physical imperfection could do such different things to my inner psyche?

Oh, but dear Tricia... it's the other way around. The trip wasn't the problem, of course.

My inner psyche, at the August juncture, was already to its final stage in the swirl pattern: overwhelmed, anxious, and fully insecure.

And it took a near fall for me to see it so plainly. Damn you, asshole swirl!!!

The trip was the revealer, the measuring stick, that which yanked the curtain back from the wizard’s control center,

the Litmus Test.

Too bad we can’t manufacture periodical near-falls to serve as mirrors reflecting our inner wellness. What we can do, I'd say, is to use our imagination to conduct the test. Here's the question that I've decided to ask myself from time to time in my quiet moments: "If I were to make a mistake right now - big or small - what would my inner dialogue say about it? What would my body say about it? How would it ruffle my feathers? How would it not?

Because tripping on this trip of a life is a built-in guarantee. How I translate the trips has to do with the type of relationship I have with myself and that's where my own magic enters... it's not up to the uneven curb.

It's up to me.

Birthing in 2019

So I’m at the elementary school where my kids attend for an event recently and I find myself – early for once - lingering in the hallway. In-between my date’s (read: 3 yr old daughter’s) demands, I discovered a message whose content demanded my attention more… It was in black construction paper letters on one of the teacher’s doors for all who enter it every day to see: 

"This year we will do what has not been before."

Right there. I felt something.

Here’s what I felt.

I felt that what I knew to be true was being posted in elementary school speak:

Life is the business of creating. 

Who knows this better than teachers? Who year after year conduct a series of similar lessons with similar assignments and expectations and ways of doing business and yet whose years look wildly different (asks their spouses) – no two alike.

The quote itself unearthed in me a sense of wonder at the time – a wonder about my very day…  what would I be privy to experiencing over the next 15 minutes? The next 5? The next 1? The mystery it provoked was a teensy bit intoxicating, and I promise the only bevy options at this school event were hot tea and coffee. 

I don’t know if this makes any sense, but my mind went to one of those play doh pusher-outer things, that you schmoosh playdoh into and then it spews out the other side… and then from there I went more grotesque: pork coming out of a meat grinder.

Why don’t I just go ahead and say the human manifestation of my playdoh and pork imagery:

A slimy lil thing being brought into this world from its momma.

Something being born.

What if we looked at ever aspect of life in this way? That each moment is a moment being actively born into existence that has never been before? 

What was brought to mind was last Saturday when my fam was invited to our cousins’ home for a holiday gathering. In addition to the ornament exchange and prime rib scrumptiousness, there was another pinnacle of focus for those gathered: The Broncos game. (In fact, Scott had a much more dialed-in experience than the rest of us: he departed the family festivities to mozie on down to the stadium containing the action itself.) 

What we found ourselves talking about, overlooking the game on the TV while sipping our beer/wine, was that in a world when almost everything can be damn well near predicted (weather, stocks, baby genders), never will there be a way to take away the unpredictability of the live-ness of sporting competitions. Nobody… NOBODY… can know how a football game will go, what will have us holding our breaths, what will have us with our heads in our hands, what will have us maniacally jumping on couches like madmen and women. Which players will perform above their perceived talent threshold. Which will flop. Which team will win, how they will win. 

There is no satisfying substitute for watching the art of something we anticipate unfolding.

That’s sort of WHAT LIFE IS EVERY SINGLE SLIVER OF IT… art unfolding. Moments being birthed one after the other. A painting evolving into existence, brushstroke by brushstroke.

If this is true. Could we maybe gift the birth of each unfolding second with more anticipation?  

I’m reading a book right now called, “The Artist’s Way.” It’s been around for fifteen plus year and sorta famous in many circles, I’m learning, for helping folks “unblock” their creative potential; many have found their callings through the author, Jullia Cameron’s, tutelage.  

She’s damn deep, and I love her. She opened me up to a whole new premise: 

Our creator encourages creativity.

Just as our Source authored us, we get to join in similar authorship; with each moment, we are actively creating.

She says this: “If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.

This ups the ante: Cameron is saying that not only are we – regardless of consciously knowing we are or not – leaving a creation in our wake just by being alive, there’s something wacky-cool that happens when we intentionally unearth our individual creative gifts and channel them into the universe's synchronicity. 

In other words, there's living (creating) and then there's living (creating).

I don’t know about you, but if I had to say where I’d like to be on our electrical sea, I’d prefer to exist as a creature who contributes to its good than as a piece of purposeless pollutant floating on its surface. 

So, even though that elementary school teacher probably put those letters up in August, to set the stage for her students walking in for a new school season, I am choosing to make the message the focus for the many millions of moments of my 2019:

"This year we will do what has not been before."

This year I will do what has not been before.

Life is the business of creating.

Heck, I'm not gonna wait until the ball drops, even. I'm paying increased attention and anticipation to this unfolding masterpiece of mine....

starting...

NOW. 

And I'm already intoxicated, without the New Years champagne.

Happy New Year, friends.

How What Threw Me Has Wound Up Affirming Me

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was a Christian. I mean, it wasn’t my fault I was clueless about his agnosticism: he led my parents’ freakin Sunday School class at our Christian church. He appeared by all measures to be all in. Apparently, my parents at the onset of their marriage had hashed out a deal that my dad would be closeted about his lukewarm feelings towards Jesus’s presumed divinity with us kids and loyal to the church my mother was deeply devoted to. All she really asked was for him to show up. But, the perpetual joiner, he couldn’t help himself but to go and be involved.

Even though I didn’t find out about his agnosticism until my early teen years, I credit my dad for his authenticity with the Christian church itself. I think most of the adults, including the pastor, he was upfront with took great comfort in hearing his refreshingly raw honesty: Dad didn’t know about Jesus’s Christ-ness and he wasn’t afraid to admit it.

But when I learned, I wasn’t comforted. 

I was straight-up confused.

How could he go each week? How could he fake it? How could I have shared a house for a baker’s dozen number of years with someone who didn’t share this BIG thing with rest of us (and not know it).

There are two things, in long conversations I remember having late into the night during those years while in the house and a few back for college breaks after I left it, I remember penetrating my thought process at the time the most. Hell, they’ve penetrated it ever since.

#1) Dad used this word often, when I asked how he could be SO Christian and yet not one: 

TRAPPINGS.

He said that he chose to be part of a faith community because he stood for the same things it stood for: the values, the focus on contributing to common good, the priority to care for our community/world in a collective way. But that he would not assume the title, because he could not subscribe to all the “trappings.” 

Trappings.

It made me think he was worried about getting “caught.” Like Christians were out to get him.

(P.S. Lots of Christian ARE out to get people. Thankfully, we didn’t surround ourselves with those).

But it wasn’t his control or independence he was afraid to lose… it wasn’t that he was reticent to belong to something, get swept away by something… it wasn’t that he was too stubborn (although, it’s only fair to note that he most definitely was). He wasn’t avoiding Christianity to make a statement, to be different.

All of these seemed to me to be likely reasons for my dad to have chosen heathen-ship.

Here’s what it really was: doctrine and theological belief – at least in the Christian culture I was raised in – was as necessary to the decision to be a Christian as eating no meat is to the decision to be a vegetarian. And so… if Dad couldn’t look in the mirror and say that he had accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, then he couldn’t say he was a Christian.

And, to him, all that doctrinal jargon was fluff. Unnecessary. Getting in the way. Man made. 

Trapping.

Like there is this artificial shroud of thick, foggy air wisping around Jesus that we people made ourselves and bore into existence between us and him, and that as a result we have to penetrate through all this dense religiosity to get to who he actually is, and that the thicker and more oppressive and less see-through the fog of religiosity gets, the higher Jesus gets elevated into something he’s not.

Dad was saying that it wasn’t himself he was worried would get trapped.

It’s Jesus.

And we did it to him. 

And then, #2) “Have you ever thought of this, Tricia: How would your life, my life, anyone’s life be different if Jesus hadn’t come along?” 

Trishie may not have gotten much sleep that night.

Or the next.

I felt stumped. And it made me mad that, as a person who took her faith so seriously, I didn’t have some semblance of confidence about how the world as a whole would be different were it not for Jesus.

The best I could come up with was kinda canned and chinsy, “Then we wouldn’t be saved?”

To be fair to myself, it was sorta a stupid question… if we are using Christian speak and operating within the Christian framework then it’s obvious that God would have fulfilled his prophesy somehow, if not by the guy from Nazareth. My answer shoulda been, “If Jesus didn’t exist with the whole virgin birth thing and cross thing and stone-rolled-away thing, then it woulda been Fred (with a cloud elevator entrance, then golden dagger death, then mystical pigeon rebirth) or Gina (by way of a clamshell reveal, then circle of fire exit, then invisible mermaid appearance). 

I mean: WHO CARES. 

And that’s just it. That’s JUST what I think Dad was getting at – whether he meant to or not. (Perhaps a more accurate statement is that it’s what I’M getting at these some-many years later as a result of Dad’s provocation):

It’s not the package that matters.

I choose the package of Jesus, because It’s the best-known manifestation of the God I have come to know.

Would I have known this God without the package of Jesus? I say yes. I find my God everywhere.
But at some point ya gotta hitch your wagon to something concrete. And Jesus, I argue, is the most concrete package that demonstrates, incarnates if you will, the God I know… the God with whom not many were familiar at the time.

Which is to say:
a) He is loving (not judgmental)
b) He is peaceful (not violent)
c) He is forgiving (not vengeful)
d) He is humble (not boastful)
e) He works for the poor (not the powerful)
f) He relies on Bigger Understanding (not human understanding)
g) He is accessible to everyone (not just some)
h) He provides a spirit of calm (not fear)
i) He is personal and experience-able (not distant and unavailable)
j) He says we are fully worthy (not 99% or ¾ or ½ or UN)

And lastly:
k) He makes my life simultaneously harder and better

I don’t hide the fact that I get super reflective at Easter-time and Christmas-time about this Jesus guy. I turn him over and around and upside down in my head. Hope he doesn’t get dizzy. I know the process for me is dizzying. 

I guess I just wanna be pretty darn sure He’s the guy for me.

This Christmas season, I turn to my dad for that answer…

..whose surprising admittance to me that he was not a Christian has turned out to be a powerful clarity-maker:

I choose Jesus for the same reasons Dad wasn’t so sure:

#1) I follow the Jesus who is untrapped by our human bells and whistles.
#2) I follow the Jesus who is a concrete package to make better known the God in my heart.

Turns out, that man I shared a house with the first half of my life and I had a lot more in common than we realized. 

(Except the stubborn part… I completely and wholly refuse to believe that I am ever stubborn...like, ever.)

Five Things Keeping Me Up At Night about the Kavanaugh Kluster

Preamble: I like alliteration enough to force it. 

Also: I began working on this well before the nomination was confirmed. As a result, this piece is belated on the timeline, but still alive in my heart and will be for a long, long, long, long, long time. 

#5   Our coarseness, our disregard for one another’s wellbeing, our ridicule. In short: Our behavior. 

After last Thursday’s 8ish-hour-long hearing, there was no shortage of reaction - media and other. The kinds that keep me up at night: meanspirited, shame-filled, inhumane, hot-headed, tactless, name-calling, judgment-laden, hateful, spew-y. 

I only made it halfway through the SNL re-enactment of Matt-Damon-as-Kavanaugh’s testimony that went viral. The ridicule and mocking of the man made my whole being uneasy; I had to turn it off. I only made it halfway through a YouTube clip of President Trump’s rally when, unlike his previous diplomacy on the subject, he made clear his stance by ridiculing and mocking Ford’s testimony. Again, my body responded, this time with a sweaty chill; I had to turn it off.

Finding amusement in another’s pain (and I feel it necessary to add: even when it is a natural consequence to one's own action)... there is no honor in this.

The theme is clear here: We are mad as snakes and we are letting our mad pass straight to mean - whether it’s delivered by late night humor or cleverly and innocently packaged by way of a snarky GIF or spoken straight from the President’s mouth. 

Let me be clear: This isn't a media problem. This isn't a leadership problem. This isn't a party problem.

This is a society problem. 

I'm calling us ALL out. We are unilaterally ugly, and it is diminishing out humanity.   

I'm not asking us to stop being mad. I'm asking to trade out made and mean with mad and compassionate. It's trickier. It's also better.

#4  Everything’s confusing. The whole shebang is like an onion. So. Many. Layers. = More. Than. One. Thing. In. Play. = No. Magic. Bullet.

It’s political. It’s personal. It's confusing. It’s life. We cannot expect simplicity, so can we quit expecting it? Quit requiring it?  

Kavanaugh's nomination was wrapped in lots of political layers long before anyone knew who Ford was. Yes? 

The fact that there's such heavy overlap between the citizens who did not approve Kavanaugh's nomination before Ford made her accusations and the citizens who have spoken out in belief of Ford's accusations, honing in on the theme of support for survivors of sexual assault, CONFUSES THINGS.

The fact that there's such heavy overlap between the citizens who approved Kavanaugh's nomination before Ford made her accusation and the citizens who have spoken out with suspicion about Ford's accusations, suspicious in fact of claims of sexual assault in general being used unhonorably, CONFUSES THINGS.

Those who thought Kavanaugh was an uncool dude before think him more uncool. Those who thought Kavanaugh was a cool dude before think he's unfairly under siege. 

It is irresponsible to not recognize the political muddiness. 

Ready for a follow-up consequence to this phenomenon? It's very. very. very. dangerous. And it is this assumption: Democrats support survivors of sexual assault; Republicans do not.  

This keeps me up at night. 

#3.5   Speaking of layers, there's another one that I can't shake. It has cropped up a lot, these questions: Are we so harsh a society that we will not grant forgiveness for actions done in the past? When a mistake is made, is ruin the only path? Is there room for redemption?

[This takes us down a totally new path in that it makes an assumption I haven't made up to this point in this post: That there actually was a mistake committed... That in fact Kavanaugh did attempt rape as a teenager.]

Sticking with my "complicated" theme from #4 above, this is a complicated question with a complicated answer, especially related to the Kavanaugh Kluster. And it's no secret, from #5 above, that in fact I do believe our society is harsh and errs on the side of judgment, finger-pointing, and un-compassion.

But that's not the end to my thoughts here. (shocker) 

When our kids screw up, Scott and I use the phrase "How will you make it right?" It's a super boiled-down, adolescent version of Restorative Justice. [They suck at it, by the way, usually digging their heals in their unwillingness to ADMIT THEIR WRONGS. But even if and after they have, they suck at Restorative Justive: "I'll tell my bro his eyes are pretty to make right that I beat him to a pulp."] 

Turns out, society sucks at it, too. We dig our heals in, belligerently refusing to admit wrong. (Correlation between harsh public response in all ways and the refusal to come clean is clear to me). But then, if we do, we mis-assign the consequence with the wrong. As Tarana Burke said when I heard her speak recently (and I'm indirectly quoting): Offenses happen on a spectrum. Consequences need to happen on a spectrum.

If Kavanaugh made a wrong in his past, his self-redemption and public-redemption will come when he faces it. When he makes it right. When he holds himself accountable.

It's a painfully awful process for the doer of the wrong, the one who fell from graces. But we have champions who have gone down this road less travelled before. I see it happen all the time in not-famous people (ask someone in committed recovery). We see it more rarely in famous people, but examples are there there as well.

If the question is: Does a wrong ever get righted? The answer is in the question: Yes, if the person has in fact righted the wrong.

Simple, yet uber complicated. 

#3  #Ibelieveher is not the same as #herstoryisprovenbeyondareasonabledoubt.

I am fully aware that I am skating on thin ice here by stating this (I'm picturing people near and dear to my heart in this moment exhaling out loud, "Oh Tricia." Guess what the other half of my friends are exhaling? They're breathing out an: "Amen.").

All of ya: Read On.

I love #Ibelieveher. As you know by the blog post I wrote previous to this one, "Out From Under a Rock" - since I have no experience with sexual assault - I can only empathize with the necessary-ness of being believed. Being believed in a spirit-of-support sense is what will bring so many darknesses into the light - past ones, present ones, and future ones. #Ibelieveher is powerful. #Ibelieveher is necessary. 

Lest we miscommunicate by stating it, though... let me say this: We do ourselves a huge disservice - on either side of this equation - to confuse the spirit of belief with that of proof. To confuse support with due-process. To confuse lifting someone up - backing someone up - with judicial decisiveness.

Lest I miscommunicate in that last paragraph, allow me also to say that we must be aware that just because there is not enough evidence or enough witnesses or enough corroboration does not mean that it didn't happen. 

This is not new; the court of law does not always teeth out the truth. Period. To pretend this is a new phenomenon is silly. 

It keeps me up at night that we aren't talking about acknowledging this.

#2  The complaints about timing.

They bug me. 

If in fact Kavanaugh attempted rape in high school, why did he not make right that wrong before his career was at its highest stakes? 

Cuz, why would he? 

If in fact Ford was sexually assaulted in high school, why did she not make the accusation before her perpetrator's career was at its highest stakes? 

Cuz, why would she? 

I dug a little on Ford's timeline, and learned - quite happily, actually - that she has made it no secret that her accusation's timing is linked to Kavanaugh's nomination. (Look at "Late August" https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/17/politics/kavanaugh-ford-timeline/index.html). 

I'm not happy about the timing. I hate it. It's another layer to the onion that makes it all even more complicated. But, that doesn't stop me from getting it. 

It keeps me up at night that we aren't getting it.

#1.5 Remarks that "Males in our current climate are in increasingly compromised positions and we are setting precedences that force innocent ones to shake in their boots about future false accusations cropping up from women" are not taken seriously. 

Hello, thin ice. 

I'm back. 

I continue to skate upon you.  

These remarks are felt by many, males and females. I've had elder women who love my husband to pieces, in conversations around these past few weeks, share with me their fear for his future. "All it would take is for one disgruntled woman from his past - in his professional life, in his life working with youth in the church, in his college social life - to get on her high horse and ruin Scott and your lives together." 

Listen to me: We need to listen to people who feel this way. We need to follow the reasoning. We need to get inside that head. 

WE CANNOT DISMISS PEOPLE'S FEAR ABOUT THIS, BECAUSE FEAR IS REAL AND PEOPLE ARE FEELING IT. 

This fear is a result of learning - conscious or subconscious - by what their life stories have taught them. 

Some of it is based in fact: There have been accusations made by women that have wound up false. 

Some of it is based in what I've come to view as fiction: Men aren't behaving as badly as we all think. Women - in lots of cases - are being unfair and oversensitive. (If you read my previous piece, you know that this was my position at one time).

Some of it is based in personal experience with women who flaunt and flirt and invite, then unwittingly (or wittingly) bait men into no-win situations. (I've observed this... confusing mind games in an equal opportunity offender)

Some of it is based in perceived lopsidedness: It just doesn't set right with me, this imbalance: Are we saying women are always right and men are always wrong??

Some of it is based in suspicions about motivation: vindictive, revenge-seekers also come in all different shapes and sizes and genders. 

I'm sure I'm missing lots of reasons for the fear. What it's based upon... 

But again - there is no use belittling or poking holes in or rolling eyes at or ridiculing the fear. There is only use in taking a peak behind it. 

The reasons for it might be good and honest and personal and specific. The reasons for it might be based in falsehoods and misunderstandings. 

Either way, to update/revise what leads to the fear here, some "unlearning" is going to have to take place before "relearning" takes place. 

Here's how my learning has taken new shape (through unlearning and relearning): This is not a take-no-prisoners attack on any one body of humanity. This is an invitation to ask questions about the patriarchal society in which most men and women don't even know we are players. The point is increasing our consciousness about the power this has had over us for centuries and continues to have over us. Women are not exclusively at fault. Men are not exclusively at fault. We all have a responsibility to wake up from our brainwash. The first way to wake up from our brainwash is to expose the yuck that is the product of our brainwash, the havoc caused while zombie walking. Sexual assault is the worse yuck and the yuck gets increasingly less yucky from there. But all levels of the yuck are products of the unconsciousness about our brainwash. 

So, here's my response to the remark, "Males in our current climate are in increasingly compromised positions, and we are setting precedences that force innocent ones to shake in their boots about future false accusations cropping up from women." 

Women who feel this way. Men who feel this way. Any-sexual-oriented-individuals-who-feel-this-way: 

ENGAGE IN THE CONVERSATION. Don't be afraid. Don't hide. Don't play victim. 

LEARN.

(And sometimes this means unlearning first).

#1  We are talking a lot. But mainly with people who agree with us. 

Don't stop doing this. 

Just don't stop there. Please, don't stop there. 

And if you don't trust yourself to talk with people who disagree with you - which is fantastic self awareness - this is just information, just facts you can work with. Knowing you are too emotional to talk with someone with opposite views because you cannot leash your words, body language, anger is nothing more than evidence - evidence to suggest that you've got more prerequisite work to do to get there. 

I was a math teacher and couldn't stand it when students (and parents) would proclaim, "I'm just not good at math." That's resignation. A cop-out. A dismissal of personal responsibility to change one's grade.

It's not ok with me for us to be resigned about staying not-good at discourse...to be ok with an "F" in it. 

Resources and articles abound. Google: "Strategies for talking with those I don't agree with." I took a stab at it in this post: How to be Ugly-Averse, Not Conflict-Averse. Just. Don't. Stop. Trying.

This my friends is something - in a world where it sometimes feels we don't have control over many big things - we DO have control over. And it IS a big thing.* 

*And if that isn't good enough reason then do it for me: help me get more sleep, help me be kept less up at night: get good at civil discourse.  

****************************************************************************

Q: Did I lie about there being 5 Things That Keep Me Up At Night?

A: Yes. There are seven.

Out From Under A Rock

I’ve been living under a rock.

My parents, while exceptionally nurturing in most ways, completely omitted educating their only daughter about body safety. 

The Girl Scouts, as I recall, was the source of a really fun self defense class. 

That pretty much covers what I entered the world as an 18 yr old female adult knowing about protecting my body from harm. 

My inflated sense of safety worked out for me, though. 

And it has served as a shield from the truth as a result.

Facts:

1) In my young adult years, my girlfriends demanded that we intentionally walk home together after being out late. I reluctantly agreed, but thought them dramatic.

2) I foolishly blacked out once at a frat house in college. My punishment: I woke up - stinky and embarrassed but physically untouched - on a bean bag chair and the guys who politely bid me good morning led me to one of their dressers, atop it a tidy pile of my jewelry (which I apparently had belligerently demanded be taken off before I passed out). I thanked them for their inconvenience of having housed me for 6 hours and skipped back to my dorm.

P.S. I shared a Cross Country team with most of the boys belonging to that fraternity and they were honorable dudes, fiercely protective of the girl athletes on the team. I had no idea there would’ve been any other way to black-out-then-pass-out in a college frat house.

3) My first apartment in an urban environment was a 1 BR dwelling in the basement of a tall brick building in Cleveland, Ohio. When my girlfriends came to visit for the first time and immediately saw the bars observable from the outside of the apartment windows at street level, one said, “Sometimes I think that girl trusts God too much.” I ran after dark and often left my car doors unlocked.

4) I left for Africa in my mid 20s with an organization called the Peace Corps and there for the first time noticed men’s eyes on me. Part of our Peace Corps training us American women volunteers how to stay safe. My heightened awareness of physical vulnerability as a woman while in Africa felt foreign. At this point, I still could avoid coming to terms with my naivety of the 25 years of my American experience, since I could frame this new feeling of danger as a product of the country I was in. Thank God the US is so safe, I remember thinking.

5) Back in America, I entered into a profession dominated by women and wondered what all the fuss was about the glass ceiling. My male counterparts got paid exactly what I got paid and minded their manners just fine.

6) When Scott and I began making babies, our first several were boys. I remember friends who'd had baby girls would say, "You guys are lucky. With a boy, you only have to worry about one penis. With girls, we have to worry about a bunch of them." I remember my main reaction was a sympathetic chuckle. But my second reaction at the time was inner: "Why we gotta go and make girls all different from boys? Girls get to decide just the same as boys do about sex. It's sorta sexist to suggest otherwise, don't ya think?" I am both happy and sad about my reaction then: Happy that my experience with my body had been so positive and so sexually safe that I had the luxury of assuming girls always get to choose. I am sad about my reaction then, because it misguidedly and ironically waved an inner flag of feminism absent from knowledge i did not have then: for all women, sexual choice is not guaranteed.

7) When, a year ago, women around our globe began communicating that they, too, had survived either sexual assault or unwanted sexual attention, I was not able to say Me Too. It took multiple conversations with women I love to conclude that my story was completely unique and wildly lucky.

8) Add to all of this an inner understanding from a very young age that my body is fantastic and strong and healthy and lovely and useful and mine - that it is to be used how I want it to be used and to that end my relationship with it has always been equal parts Boss and Friend, empowered and loving, protective and appreciative, in charge and without shame.

Now that you have the facts, you can plainly see how my inflated sense of safety has been reinforced at every juncture of my life. You can also conclude how, as a result, I’ve been shielded from the truth.

Because the facts of my personal story don't add up to the truth.

Here’s the truth:

We live in a culture where my story is more fairy-tale-fantastical than on-the-ground-believable.

This makes me all at once a terrible candidate and an incredible candidate to discuss the detestable things that happen to women every day in this country. Why terrible? It is a position of no authority or first handed ness. Why incredible? Because my chips have never been down, and I’m still mad as hell.

I feel like a child, stomping through life without knowing what I don't know in relationship to conversations about sexism, feminism, women's rights, glass ceilings, sexual misconduct, sexual violence, gender stereotyping, and the like. I liken my blindness and naive downplay of these things to being white and not thinking racism is all that bad. A child-like approach.

But I sure as hell won't let the fact that I've been behaving like a kid stop me from growing up.

A mad adult has more sophisticated, tactical strategies for channeling her anger.

We don't tantrum; we act.

The Abominable Snowman

Yesterday Campbell lurked through a toy box to unearth an unlikely pad of Christmas stickers. We sat on the porch (in our tank tops and shorts), and Campbell was entertained for a solid 18 minutes peeling off the snow-covered evergreen trees, Rudolphs, Jack-in-the-boxes, dollbabies, and - yes - Abominable Snowmans.

When she got to the dude, whose sticker image admittedly looked scary, she scrunched up her face and said, “Dat guy bad.”

I responded with, “Well, wait, Cam. He’s hurting. Remember about his toothache and how much it hurt him? He was mad all the time, cuz he was in pain. So what if we think of him not as bad, but as needing healed?”

Silence.

She was well on her way to a sticker of the candy cane variety.

I suddenly remembered that the only viewing for her of the 1939 rendition of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer was last Christmas and that she was TWO at the time (attention span of a fruit fly). It also struck me that now at three she hadn’t signed up for a discourse in the manifestation of pain in a person, much less a furry white snow creature... that all she wanted was to STICK SOME STICKERS ON A PIECE OF PAPER, MOMMY.

And that was when it became clear to me that the Abominable Snowman lesson was not for her.

It was for me.

Friend Shopping... Who Are You Shopping For?

I don’t particularly like the experience of shopping at the grocery store.

Although I am a complete maniac for a good deal, clothes shopping from store to store for longer than the length of two Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes exhausts my thinker.

Don't get me started on tourist shacks set up to bait you into agonizing over which trinket, as a parent who occasionally says yes to fun, to get ripped off by: a beanie baby horseshoe crab, an hour glass key chain, or a flimsy mood ring. 

Amazon’s fine, I guess, but honestly I’m not sure my credit card can handle much more of it.

But friends.

Friends are different.

Now friends I will peruse for and observe upon and try on and hunt after and contemplate about and sift through piles and piles and piles and piles and piles to uncover. 

I will walk up and down aisle upon aisle of so-so matches until out of the corner of my eye I catch the glimmer of someone who speaks to my heart, to my soul, to my funny bone, to my particular brand of wacky. 

While I have the luxury of giving up on actual shopping when the going gets tough, I do not afford myself the same resignation when deeply in need of friend acquisition.

That’s right:

I shamelessly shop for friends. I’m a proud consumer of soulmates. I cunningly coupon-cut for connections.

Now, I’m not sure what you make of this. Does it come off as forced? Trying too hard? Manufactured? Would you suggest that authenticity of friendship is incompatible with the work or strategic scheming for it?

It’s ok if you feel this way. Shopping for friends the way I do may be a bit over the top for most. 

But I’ll say it’s the only way I’ve discovered to survive multiple moves, ones where built-in establishments of local connection have been far from guaranteed. Desparacy breeds creativity. And dang it if I haven’t felt like a street cat grasping for scraps in the start of every new city I ever dropped into. I’ve never really been into scraps, so this alley cat had to get formulaic fast.

Over the years, I’ve harvested some kick ass friends through some kick ass work. 

So by now, I’ve developed friend buckets for the fruits of my friend-shopping (if you are an analogy junky and are still working with the retail theme, don’t think buckets, think cellophane bags... like the ones at those mall candy shops to provide divisions for the sugar-filled varieties you’re shopping for). Since I can tell you are dying to hear them, I shall share the friend buckets of which I speak, for sometimes knowing what friend buckets you want/need filled can aid the filter through which you friend shop.

The Historical Friend Bucket

Oops. Sorry. This bucket actually has nothing to do with your current situation, nor can you shop for them now. These are the peeps you still call friends who harbor your first period stories and who have pictures of you wearing really bad bangs. Maybe she held your hand when you weaved on foot back from a college party or two. Maybe she muddled through your first job with you or wiped off your mascara when your first real love cracked open your heart. She probably knows your parents by name and has been to their home a handful of times. You may have letters you wrote to one another if you lived in different cities or countries for any length of time, way before we held screens in our hands. And here’s the other thing: you might hardly see her and perhaps hardly even communicate with her in your everyday life. If you don't live in the same city currently, it’s within the realm of possibility that she can’t keep track of your dog’s name (and even the neighbor with which you share zero percent knows your dog’s name). But you know firmly that she is the keeper of your memories and your identity. She can connect the dots of your phases and funks faster than a kid can connect the numbered dots outlining a clown on those restaurant color pages...because she has something none of the friends in your other buckets has; she has the gift of time. She’s witness to your blips on a long range time line. When you were young and stupid and broke and didn’t know you were these things, you were smart enough to invested a decent chunk of metaphorical change into her and she you. And I’m a stinky business woman, but I do know that the secret to wealth is compounded interest and the secret to compounded interest is time and this is the very thing in this woman’s corner. Your friendship is rich. She is a historical friend.

The Just-the-Two-of-You Bucket

This friend fits into the puzzle of your life in the nooks and crannies of your individual time... the time when you are not attached to your partner or your children or your job. You learn that sharing your selves with each other without necessarily sharing your professions/families with each other works best for you both. Maybe your kids’ genders, ages, or interests don’t line up. Maybe your partner is a triathaloner and hers worships air conditioning. Maybe hers works selling hedge funds and yours is a hippy-at-heart hater of the stock market. Maybe she has explained a million times what her title means at work and you still don’t know exactly what she does at her job. Maybe you don’t even truly love the way she runs her home or her kids (It’s ok). Or maybe it’s other things like logistical things (living across town from one another) or selfish things (you don’t want to share her with anybody else) or depth-related things (you connect on such a deep level that the limited time you can scrape together you’d rather go undistractedly soulful with than wipe-kids-mouths-in-between-15-second-snippets-at-the-zoo with). For whatever reason, though, you and she work best when it is just the two of you. You don’t get to do “sharing life” with her in the sense that major chunks of your life go unobserved by her. But it’s kinda cool that way. It’s like getting to bring back your inner individual, exploring the parts that make you you without all those other PEOPLE around (as in: who you spend the other 14 hours of the day with) and without the pressure of ever including THEM in the mix. You get to drop your primary identifiers: wife, mother, employee, which - as a plus - means you get to drop the insecurities or challenges you might have surrounding these roles when engaging in conversations with this friend. You’ll talk about your kids/partner/job, but have the liberty to do a “show and tell” without the show. Time with Just-The-Two-Of-You friend usually looks like coffeeing or lunching or desserting or cocktailing or hobbying or movie-ing or booking or pedicuring or walking. Friends in other buckets are doing these things with you, too, but Just The Two of You friend is JUST doing that stuff with you. And it works.

The Mentor Bucket

The qualities of a mentor friend are different for each gal. Whether this relationship is helping to coach you in general life, work life, family life, parenting life, relationship life, athletic life, academic life, or religious life, this is a person who wants to see you thrive. She’s generally ahead of you in life, usually in her number of years on this popsicle stand but it could be that she is a peer right near you in age but with further experience with a certain thing. You choose her knowing she has lots to teach you and this does not threaten you; it inspires you. Key: there is no competition between you... and sometimes making your mentor friend 10-15 years older than you is what allows you to pull that off. You know you’ve found her when you start finding yourself using her truisms and quotes from her sage counsel in your personal life without even realizing it. She loves you enough to both encourage and cheerlead and, because there’s safety in this relationship, you listen hard most when she’s giving you a gentle or not-so-gentle kick in the pants. You two might do the things you do with other friends, or you might not have fun or recreation or social connectivity in your lives much together at all; it could be the phone alone is your means for fruitful conversation. Generally the advisor/advisee distinction is firm and unwavering and each knows who each is in the dynamic for a long period of time, and then sometimes magic happens and as time passes the age/experience gap evaporates in each of your minds. Then, you may find yourselves on more equal playing fields, equally counseling and loving on each other. That’s when you know you are fully ready to take on a mentee yourself. Your mentor bucket isn’t a bucket you need filled anymore. 

Being Served Bucket

In the beginning, this bucket is going to sound like the last one, the Mentor Bucket. The friend you find to fill this slot is one who is similarly invested in you, is looking out for you, is committed to your wellbeing and success. But here’s where it splits off: For a time, she is holding your head above the water so you don’t drown. Did you hear that? SO YOU DON’T DROWN. All friends find themselves taking turns in a friendship serving and being served. But this is serving SO YOU DON’T DROWN. There is usually a circumstance that puts you here... maybe your relationship with your partner is in shambles, or you are financially needing to pick up a second/third job or you made a crap move and got in trouble with the law. Maybe your mental health is below sea level or the scans you just received back informed you of a scary dark mass or you get into a scary relationship with a substance. Maybe you have four kids and find yourself single parenting when that wasn’t the plan at all. It’s dark here. And scary and hard as hell. For this reason, rarely do you find a friend like this straight off the cold shelf. What you are doing is shopping around in your current friendship cart...shifting a couple ladies from other buckets to this Being Served One. If done right, the friends you adopt into this sacred space are prepared for an unconventional relationship that provides little of the standard reciprocity in normal ones. Whereas the mentor set up is inarguably more-lopsided in your favor, the Being Served setup is like a teeter totter with an elephant on one side and a grain of quinoa on the other...balance is not the objective. In fact, her care for you feels sorta awful in the beginning, while you are getting used to your legs as the One Being Served. This woman drops off meals and groceries and prescriptions from the pharmacy. She drives you around and watches your kids while folding laundry and makes phone calls to the doctor and sends you links to Saturday night live spoofs to distract you and texts you to make sure you are alive at the end of each day. When you ask her how she is doing, she says “Fine and dandy” even when she has diarrhea and one of her kids is suspended from 5th grade. Because, for a stretch of time, you are the one in crisis.  Big crisis. And then, maybe in a decade, she will be the One In Crisis. And by then you’ll be back on your feet,  holding her head above the water.

Friend of Convenience Bucket

You never have to share with this woman that you’ve concocted this name for her; it’s not entirely flattering, I realize. Nonetheless, it is a friend type and it’s really not bad to be one or be known as one. They are the people who you don’t have to go out of your way to visit with... they are fully built in to your routine. She already works on your floor or sits at the same table with you at the cafeteria or bumps into you every morning at school drop off or swings on her front porch as you pull in the driveway each evening or sits next to you in Sunday School class or sweats her ass off with you each week at hot yoga. She is one step up from an acquaintance because, due to the fact that you regularly see one another, you surprise yourself with how much you know about her. You find yourselves along the journey sharing lots with one another - how to work out that work project pickle, what to do about your kid being the kindergarten biter, when and where you’re vacationing - but you never seem to make time to see her beyond both of your regular routines. Around the family dinner table you talk about stories from your day that include around her, but she may never actually be invited to your home and vice versa. She is lovely. She is cool. She is convenient.

Friendship through Family Bucket

These are the aunts, moms, cousins, nieces, and grandmas in our lives. Or corresponding in-laws. Or a woman that may as well be family, because you have adopted her as such. You get to spend the big days of the year with her - holidays, birthdays, graduations, weddings, special occasions - and you love one another greatly, blood love and friendship love all mingled into one. Best yet, while you may fade in and out of each others’ lives at points, you know she won’t ever slip away. The friends in this bucket don’t leave it; they’re lifers. 

The Holy Grail Bucket

You like her oodles. Your partner enjoys her partner. You respect their marriage and them yours. You like to do the same things. Your kids get along and require little direction when together. You like how they parent and they you. THIS, my friends, is the Holy Grail of friends. Picnic? This family. Baseball game? This family. Date night dinner out? This couple. Over for dinner while kids turn your basement upside down? This family. Birthday parties? This family. They fit well into your BIG life, all the pieces of it. And therefore, they are a shoe-in to most everything you think to do socially. Holy Grail, yes, Holy Grail.

Bosom Buddy Bucket

Please say you’ve watched Anne of Green Gables. Please? Because the Bosom Buddy relationship outlined in this dear story is the inspiration for this category. Basically, it’s this: 

A bosom buddy is an in-the-same-city friend who shares every little itty bitty detail of life with you. She knows your underwear size and may even purchase you a pair when they’re on clearance at Target. She knows your bizarreness in everyday life to the point that she can tell in a public setting when you discreetly toot. She knows that you yoga on Saturdays, have Taco themed nights with your family on Tuesdays, and that you generally grab a Starbucks as a treat to yourself before work on Fridays. When she calls during the day just to check in, you can come out with it, “I have a urinary tract infection and I am scratching my vagina off. How are you?” As you well see, there are no niceties. You know each others’ mannerisms, quirks, food preferences, times of the month, humors, phobias, and deepest secrets. You often wonder if you really needed to be married if sex weren’t in the picture, because most of your emotional needs can be realized through Bosom Buddy. She and you share a safety and a trust that is unshakable and in her you feel grounded, because now there’s one more person in the world, besides God and your spouse, who knows you to your core. 

So now I ask you: Is your friendship state in need of refreshment? Could it handle a little intentional shopping? And, if so, which friendship bucket are you hoping to fill?

And if you’re feeling low on energy and time to make that shopping endeavor happen, just remember the way you feel when you’ve found the perfect dress that matches your every curve. How much more enhanced and energy-filled will your life feel with a perfectly matched friend?

The Nerve of That Customer To Wear Cute Shoes

I’m in line with my husband while our four hooligans are seated at a table in the chipotle dining room wreaking noise havoc on all the innocent eaters nearby. Pointing to the shoes of the gentleman standing in front of me, I say to Scott, “I love those, I could see you wearing those.” Scott nods and then says about the shoes worn by two people ahead in line he’s been admiring, “I like those! They’re cute, right?”

I did not like this woman. 

I did not like this woman at all.

(“This woman” was wearing the “cute shoes.”)

Here were her two offenses: She was tan. She was athletic.

I, on the other hand, had surgery recently to remove an irregular mole and wear 50 spf from head to toe even on days I stay inside; I am the hue of loose leaf paper (not recycled).

Additionally, in an effort to lighten the pressures on myself this summer, I begrudgingly freed myself from one of my favorite hobbies: running. I haven’t worn a sports bra or sweated beyond what it takes to wheel the trash out in 5.5 weeks.

PS. My husband has a high regard for all people - any gender will do - who improve their bodies through fitness. 

My insecurity, as you can well see, on this chipotle evening was at an all-time high. 

All he said was that her bubbly little set of bright orange-and-pink sneakers were cute. 

I didn’t care. 

I didn’t like her.

Wait: there was a third strike; she appeared to be alone. As I glanced back at my offspring and saw them engaged in a game of makeshift bowling on the table surface with Campbell’s plastic princesses as the pins, I became further dignified in my ridiculous inner criticism of this athletic, tan, ALONE woman.

But she sorta redeemed herself, for when Scott and I were confusing the hell out of the 17 yr old tortilla dude by trying to order our 6 meals by both shouting out incoherent contributions (really, families ought to have just one chief fast food orderer), I decided to save our marriage and scoot on away to let him take over and as I passed her while slinking forward through the line, she gave me a knowing smile. It said all at once, “Why can’t it just be a tad easier?”

So, I returned to our table to break up the idiot bowling game feeling a bit sheepish about my lively and immature head dialogue about someone who is likely rather nice. 

AND THEN I see her cute little neon shoes saunter to a nearby table WITH HER DATE. 

#1) she’s, after all, not alone.

#2) her date is an autistic teenaged boy.

I proceed to observe her caringly spoon the contents of their shared burrito bowl into his mouth between bouts of his hand flapping, the two working in synch - a sign they’ve done this a million times before and will a million times more. 

And I eat. Every. Single. Word. 

I eat all the words my mind conjured up moments before in line.

And I eat all the ones this whole ragged-edged summer has brought up in me the past couple months.

The ones that paint me as a victim and the ones that are jealous of others’ simpler lives. The ones that repeat, “It’s too much. It’s just too much.” when I’m deep in an overwhelmed pit. The ones that wonder how everyone else is doing it. The ones that dismally lament, too concerned with self-involved junk to look up. The ones that shake me off my seat as the hero writer of my own story and instead leave me feeling helplessly trampled under offenders’ feet. (Cute shoe wearing feet, no less)

I got a good laugh last night. 

At myself, mainly.

Laugh at yourself, too. With kindness, if possible.

For our minds sometimes lure us unwittingly into ridiculously pathetic spaces and then feeds us good reasons to be there. 

Don’t listen. Leave it. 

And sachet back to your actual life, pale and mushy and perfect just the way it is.*

*note to reader: pale and mushy interchangeable. try filling in the blank.