Drunk on Haterade

Welcome to Fear and Loathing in Ashvegas. See how I did that? Prepared you to think how funny it will be when I deliver the subsequent self-deprecating remark? I should start with something simple and surface. I could comment rather cavalierly about the sad state of my waistline. But with more wit. Something like, "It's a good thing I have big boobs - they detract from how fat I'm getting." That one actually scores double points because I have called attention to my uncomfortably large chest in addition to to my chubbiness. You couldn't believe how many ways I've come up with to call myself fat - overweight, big-boned, rounding, tipping the scales, fleshy, hefty...you get the picture.

From the superficial, we could cross over into something slightly more personal. How about my unmarried status? There is some seriously fertile ground for Ash-bashing. We could have a few laughs - at my expense, of course - about the time lapsed since my last date. Like, "I haven't been on a date since Congress had a 50% approval rating." But after a few generalized chuckles, we have to dig deeper. To really pour on the haterade, you have to mock the heart of the matter.

You have to turn the guns on your current personal position and blow it to smithereens. Like a double agent, you have to expose yourself to the enemy and then take yoursellf out. Because, really, all you're doing is taking exactly what the enemy is thinking, dipping it twice in sarcasm, sprinkling it with a little clever wordplay and serving yourself a deceptively sticky sweet ball of venom.

And that's when you start to get drunk on the haterade. When the self-defense against what you think might be said and voicing all of the fears and doubts inside your head become a mantra that snakes through your brain until you really start to believe it. You really start to think that all those things you're saying to be funny are true. That you are fat. And that you will be alone forever. And, more than that, you will be alone because you're deficient. Because you're less than what anyone else would want. You start to see those fears and doubts and insecurities that existed in your mind become reality because you made them so...because you allowed your mockery to become who you are.

I presently have a haterade hangover. It makes my head ache sometimes, choosing between the easy, glib remark and responding in a more self-respecting manner. I mean, it's funny. The haterade makes people laugh. And despite my best efforts, I sometimes still take a shot. But other times, I'm trying give myself a fighting chance against the hair of the dog that bit me.

Facing the Negativo

The last couple of weeks, I seem to have fallen prey to The Negativo. Suddenly, my first reaction to everything is negative. Anger, irritation, impatience, anxiety, dread. It's seething just underneath my skin, and it's provoked at the least infraction. And then it's like the worst version of me just jumps down the nearest person's throat. For example,

* The Dirty Film Boys are back, smelling up the common area. Every time I walk to the bathroom, the one closest to the door turns and stares at me. I am SORRY if the click-clack of my heels on the concrete annoys you, but get over it.

* On the way back from J. Island last week, my Garmin lost its ever-loving mind and directed me into the least populated corridors of the state. And when I turned around for the second time that day using the interstate median out of frustration, I promptly found myself sidelined by the state patrol. I had never ever cried on a cop until that day. "Happy belated birthday," he said. "I'm just going to give you warning."

* The Fam is experiencing too much togetherness. Patience is fraying; tempers are flaring. We're all slightly sick of the sight of each other but are quite at a loss how to avoid the suffocating conditions. Anna, though doing remarkably well, just isn't quite ready for abandonment and so we go and we sit together and we try not to kill each other.

* Work has me tense and knotted. I love my job, but right now, it just feels like everything is on level ten. There are too many balls in the air and I'm distracted...by...what, I don't know. By the shift in the office environs because of the Rockstar's impending departure. And the potential replacement's frightening Type-A over-achieving ways.

* I'm totally annoyed by people who do things better than me. How ridiculous is that? But it's like, I want the universe to give me a break, to give me some arena where I'm a winner free and clear. But instead, I'm on the insecurity train and riding shotgun.

* Another wave of grief seems to have washed over us all, and at times, it makes me resent every spark of happiness in the world. I want to tell other people not to smile. Because every time I think we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, it fades into the distance, and all I can hear is the echo of our voices in a long dark cavern that never seems to end.

* I hate waiting. I'm so mad at waiting. Waiting for the next thing. Waiting for it to be the right time to buy a house. Waiting for the time when I'll feel like writing a book. Waiting for friends to blossom out of acquaintances. Waiting for a time when I don't stand in a room full of people and feel like the loneliest person in the world. Waiting for a time when my whole life isn't hijacked by mourning.

* I resent practicality. I want to throw caution to the wind and plan trips and be carefree. I have 80 percent of my vacation left. I have no idea when or how to take it. And sometimes, when I think about it, I just feel more tired trying to think of how to use it. I just sort of want it to go away.

* I worry about us all...all of us with our respective heart conditions. Anna's broken into a million tiny pieces. Dad's grown tired and stressed. Mom's heavy with her worry for us all. And mine empty and lonely and guilty and sad for feeling all that it feels.

Failing

Tomorrow's Friday. I have to go to a meeting in Atlanta tomorrow at 3 - the world's worst possible time to try to get into the city (and subsequently out of it afterward). It's a meeting I'm not so jazzed about - one where I think I'll be slightly out of my depth and with an Atlanta associate I don't know so well to boot. I'm not looking forward to it.

Tomorrow's Friday, so the question comes up, what are we going to do this weekend? Anna says she can be flexible, about whether we come there or not. Dad has to get a haircut, mow the lawn. Mama tries to determine from all sorts of context clues and tone of voice what Anna really wants us to do. We all try to pass the buck to each other saying, "Whatever you want to do."

I finally spoke up and said that I'd leave from the Atlanta office and travel on north to Anna's. Dad and Mama will join us Saturday after the lawn and Dad's hair get a trim.

When I called Anna to tell her, it came out in a rush. In trying to be funny, I told her that it took a flow chart to figure out this weekend's plans. And I immediately wished I could take it back. Because I know it made her feel like a burden. And she's not. But I'm tired, and tired plus frustrated sometimes leaks into your voice if you're not careful.

I want to do whatever I can to help her right now, but sometimes, it's hard. It's hard knowing that "tomorrow's Friday" always means that arrangements must be made. I feel so selfish and guilty to resent that even the tiniest bit after what Anna's gone through - with what she's still going through. And so there's this cataclysmic struggle between the rising resentment and the guilt that pushes it back down and the sadness that engulfs them both and culminates in a shuddering, "When will this end?"

When will it? I don't know. For Anna...maybe never? And for me, even the slightest moments of moving on feel wrong. When I talk to her and know she doesn't want to get off the phone because the silence will be deafening after we hang up, I feel so guilty for every second I had that day that Ronnie's death wasn't weighing on me like a ton of bricks. I know that's not realistic; in a way, I know I'm not even being fair to myself. I'm only human after all.

But there's no guidebook. There's no instruction manual for dealing with death. Each of us deals with it in our own way. Meaning that, as if the circumstances weren't bad enough, you find yourself trapped in an emotional mine field worrying that your next step might be in the wrong direction. There's a sense, however off-base, that you could be missing the right way to handle it. And when you don't handle it with the appropriate sensitivity, when being tired overcomes your sense of compassion, when your frustration with having to pack one more bag, when you can't help the little selfish corner of your heart that just wants to stay at home and do nothing, when all that bleeds through into your voice, you know you've detonated one of those things. And it splinters into a million shards of guilt.

The truth is, it's messy and painful and ugly. I don't get to walk away gracefully. I just have to blindly free-fall my way through it...trust that gravity and faith will pull me in the right direction...and that eventually I will make a landing that will be less than disastrous. And for all those times along the way that I fail, I hope that Anna knows that I'm doing the very best I can in a situation she knows better than any of us has no "best" - and that's she'll forgive me of my shortcomings.

U-nope-ia

This is not a post about a revolutionary idea. This is a post about a revelationary moment.

Everywhere you turn, no matter what stage of life you are in, there is the pressure to be perfect in it.

Okay. So you're thinking, yeah, so?

So I was watching TV the other day and a Target commercial came on - the one that has the Beatles' "Hello Goodbye" in it. It's one of those stark red and white commercials they've rolled out, commercials I've admired for their simplicity, ingenuity and strong branding. But on this day, I took off my marketing hat and put on my consumer hat and really looked at that which I consumed.

And I realized that the 30 seconds were jam-packed with anesthetized utopian presentations of various stages of life. Love and marriage, birth and family. Everyone smiling. Everyone neat and clean and antiseptic. And in that moment, I found it almost scary.

Now I see it everywhere I turn - this utopia, this smiling, khaki-and-white clad, gadding-about-town family. The attractive husband and the lovely wife. The well-dressed children. The picture-perfect family gathering.

I've been in the industry for over seven years, and I know how it works. It's all about presenting the iconic image of what we want. It's all about defining an absence and proposing a solution. And for a sparkling clean floor, that's okay. But for life, well, it's just...sad. It's just sad to be surrounded by images and messages about all that we lack. Not just the things we lack - but the people and circumstances we lack. And not only do we lack them, they don't even exist.

Life isn't perfect when you're in love; I can only assume that holds true even after you marry. Children are a blessing - and a burden. Families are wonderful and maddening. And for every happy gathering, every family member you love and treasure, there's got to be at least one who's totally dysfunctional and certifiably crazy.

There are perfect moments in life, for sure. There are moments when it all comes together. When you breathe it in. When you are alive. But they are fragile, spun-glass moments, just filaments barely holding together. And this place, this magical utopian place where the table is fashionably set for 18 of your closest friends and relatives in their designer best and their Crest white smiles? I'll check my Garmin, but I don't think it's out there.

But we look for it. By God, we wear ourselves out searching for it. We castigate ourselves for all the things we're not, and we worry over what we don't have. We worry about the places we're not and the people we're not. We strive and strive for something else...to say hello to the perfect and goodbye to the imperfect...and really, we're just stuck with something in between.

So the point is...the point is I'm going to try to stop buying in to all this. I'm going to try to shut out the messages - the ones I sometimes help create - and just figure out me and whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing based on an entirely different set of standards.

On Meeting People

I am starting to recognize a basic difference in the people I encounter as I go about creating some semblance of a life here. First, there are the Nice People. Nice People make up a great deal of the population surrounding you. Sort of like that old Seasame Street song - "These are the people in your neighborhood." You may encounter them daily - or just once. You can have a polite conversation with them. They may ask what you do, and you may feign interest in what they do. You may give them the basic vital statistics of your life (age, education, family, interests) and they will return the favor (marital status, children, pets, coffee drinker or not). Among these vital statistics, you may find commonalities. But they don't matter, because the Nice People will always be merely Nice People.

I went to lunch last week with one of the Nice People, which reminded me of the other part of the population. The small, rarefied part of the population that must be searched out, mined and cultivated. These are the Connection People. These are the people with whom the cross reference of vital statistics has no bearing. The commonalities are inconsequential. These people, the Connection People, are the people who make you feel alive when they talk about walking their dog. The Connection People create sparks and energy. They surge forward from the neutral beige of the Nice People with vivid, audacious color. Like magnets, you attract. You connect, lock together. Human Legos. (And no, I don't know those people, but I loved the photo so much I had to share - especially since it says "Cheetah '98" in the lower right corner - but I digress...).

Awash in a sea of Nice People, I am trying to sift through the sand and find those precious Connection People. In fits and starts, there are glimmers of Connection. But I need more. Not to mention that it makes me a bit sad to know that to most of the people I've met, I'm just another one of the Nice People, too.

A Mistake in Judgment

I came across an article on Yahoo last night about a new book called The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. I couldn't find the same article this morning, but I did find this insightful piece about the book on Salon.

In the book Bennetts makes a call to arms for young women not to sacrifice career in order to stay at home with children. Her argument is rooted in staying self-sufficient, maintaining earning power (which drops 37% after just three years out of the workplace) and being prepared for a husband or partner who loses his job, develops a drug, alcohol or gambling problem, or skips out on the marriage for a newer model (usually one, according to Bennetts, who is more career-minded).

Bennetts' arguments are not new. In fact, this debate has been going on since women entered the workplace, and I suspect it will go on for generations to come. In my view, the stay-at-home or stay-at-work choice is intensely personal. I have close friends who come down on both sides of the fence for reasons that are personal and economic. So that is not why I call attention to this article.

Instead, I call attention to the crux of the first paragraph of Joan Walsh's review: If female fear and self-doubt were ever eradicated, the publishing industry would collapse....no matter the issue, the premise is pretty much the same: We're doing something wrong. And in the article I read last night, Bennett was quoted as saying, "Women are so defensive about their choices." Well, no wonder. We're under attack from all sides for what we did or didn't do.

Look at me. I'm 27-going-on-28, unmarried and childless. For every person who thinks I'm living the life, there's someone to judge me as inept, incomplete, or just plain sad. A career may be completion to some, and for others, I simply haven't found my purpose until I have a baby. There's judgment for all of our choices, and most of the time, they come from other women.

We have so many choices today - which is a blessing and a curse. Believe me, I'm thankful for that - if I ever needed further convincing, I could revisit my Women's Lit text or rent HBO's Iron-Jawed Angels to reaffirm that we've got the long end of the stick. But because our place isn't dictated by society anymore, it's dictated by us. Which puts an enormous amount of pressure on choosing a direction.

The freedom to choose has also given birth to some sort of inherent insecurity about those choices. Instead of banding together and supporting each other and embracing the classic viewpoint that it takes all kinds, we spend our time defending ourselves to each other in case anyone should think we've failed womankind by taking a certain path.

All this to say that I find people like Bennetts distasteful. Her need to push her lifestyle choice to the front, to suggest that anyone who doesn't go that way is damning herself to a life of misery, points to insecurity rather than certainty. I know several stay-at-home moms who are very happy, in healthy, stable relationships and very fulfilled by the time they spend with their children. I also know a number of women who work every day and love and support their children just as much as the stay-at-homers.

Beyond the Mommy Wars, the pressure to have the right career, choose the right husband, be the right kind of homemaker is overwhelming. The Have It All Agenda is still out there, providing the illusion that we can have it all with no sacrifice - and that anything short of the sum total of all the facets of wife, mother, career woman, and individual - doesn't add up.

Yet, I think of the women I know and the choices they've made - my mother who gave up an excellent job to stay home. Pen, who stays at home and Andi, who is a working mom. Niki, who's pursuing law, and Jenn, who's pursuing social work. All of the women who read this blog and are career women, students, writers, mothers, wives, friends. And I'm proud of them all for making the decision that was right for them. No judgment. Other than I think you're all amazing women.

Naughty by Nature?

How much can a person change? Not to get into the whole nature versus nurture debate, but how much about a person is ingrained - is the very code in his or her brain that is essential to identity? A person's nature seems to be made up of a series of reactions and interactions and personal habits that are a constant. It is the proverbial tree in the forest that no one hears falling - it is that state that you are in when you are unaffected by all other things. The default setting, if you will. When circumstances requires a person to override the default setting, does it go that the default setting will come back? How many times does it take before the new setting is the default? Or can it?

I seem to have an ongoing mental tug-of-war going on between whether or not I should expect a person to change a consistent behavior. The kind of behavior that when you mention it to other people usually elicits a response like, "Oh, that's just the way she is." And if that is so, that it's just the way someone is, is that an appropriate excuse for bad behavior? Are we allowed to write off inappropriate behavior by declaring it part of our default setting? For example, I am chronically late - as many of you will attest. Can I be excused from being late when it's inconvenient and inconsiderate to other people because it's just the way I am?

And that's a rather benign example. I'm talking more about day-t0-day relations with people. Ongoing behaviors that gnaw at you, make you feel like you're going to explode if you have to interact with a person in such a manner one more time. And I'm not talking about inherently bad people. I'm talking about people whose normal human flaws just happen to be the kind that manifest in relationships with other people. Flaws of self-absorption and condescension and greed and lack of empathy. In some cases, these are people who think to treat everyone else as they imagine they would want to be treated in the same situation - never taking into account that the people on the receiving end are vastly different. People motivated, inspired, nourished, comforted by completely different things.

Thinking that this ongoing behavior can be modified is feeling like a lost cause these days. In these cases, it seems that human nature has taken root, grown and flourished, and is not to be pruned in any manner. Reasonable requests and subtle hints fall on deaf ears. The default setting returns again and again - and with great pride at times. These behaviors I find abhorrent seem to be a source of pride in some people. And I find myself exhausted by the push and pull, the desire I feel to set things right and the disappointment I feel when I fail.

Perhaps it is time for me to just let go in the tug -of-war and see what happens when we all fall down.

In Praise of My Fellow Man

Generally speaking, I hate Wal-Mart. I hate the big-boxness. The battleship blue of its sign. And the crowds, which are inevitably horrid from the moment you pull into the parking lot to the checkout line. But tonight, I needed two disparate things - groceries and a tire guage. No choice about either one, and Wal-Mart was more appealing than making two stops. My cupboards are in a sad state of affairs with all my comings and goings. And the new car comes with a guage that tells me when my tire pressure is low - this time around because of the sudden drop in temperatures.

I decided to chance it. I actually maneuvered into a parking space without much ado. I was mad that the only tire guage left was the $10 one. I debated what to do about knocking off a glass jar candle - Kim will attest this accident seems to be my lot in life. But I managed to assemble a reasonable menu for dinner, grab a loaf of bread, some Diet Cokes.

At the checkout lines, all of the under 20 items lines were packed, so I picked the traditional fare. The guy in front of me had a buggy full of groceries. But I was too tired to care, finding some relief in making it to the Wal-Mart finish line to seek out a shorter line. He had already unloaded a few things from his cart when he saw me fall in line behind him. And he put those items back in his cart and invited me to go in front of him. That never happens. I thanked him for his kindness and pulled ahead.

Checking out in front of me was a young black man. He pulled cash from his pocket to pay and unknowingly scattered a few bills on the floor. I didn't notice until he started to walk away, but I managed to catch him in time for him to get his money.

On the way home, I thought about all the little ways that humanity finds you when you least expect it. Sometimes in quiet subtle ways, like some guy responding to your harried face and letting you go first in the Wal-Mart line. He could've ignored me. I could've ignored the money on the floor or taken it for myself - it was just a couple of dollars. But somehow, the kindness showed to me made me want to make the effort to call attention to someone else's potential misfortune.

After dinner, I cleaned a few moldy things out of the fridge and took the trash out to the big cans behind the house. Tomorrow's pick up day, so I rolled mine to the end of the drive. On a lark, I rolled my neighbor's cans out there, too. I'm not the neighborly type - I only know their names and not much else about them.

It's a cold clear night, this week marking the first taste of frost. Downtown's bright - they're filming One Tree Hill down on the corner. As I turned back toward the house, I saw the lights blazing in everyone's windows. Maybe one of them was inside thinking about a bad day. Or talking on the phone to a good friend. Or just cozied up inside not wanting to venture out into the cold. Whatever they might be doing, they don't have to take the trash out.