Therese Oneill's Blog, page 2

This is where it hurts.

And don’t we all have our gashes. That wound that is just yours, in your secret tender spot. 100 people, poked in that particular place, might wince, might slap away a tiny sting in irritation. But you, you can’t stand even the thinnest chafe, the warmest puff of wind. The nerves are inflamed, torn muscles swollen, exposed, and raw to the bone.

If you don’t know me, you can dislike me. That is not my wound. You can be grossed out by my weight and scowly face. You can say my books gave you brain damage. You can dread having to talk to me as I shamble toward you.

If you meet me, and you spend 15 minutes with me…well then I rescind my offer. Now you should like me. For I am likable. This is my wound.

Loud and odd and awkward but I will suit you, I will. You’ll fascinate me and I’ll be happy I’ve found you. I’ll find joy in you in 15 minutes. WE will find it. And you’ll have no reason.

Sometimes you hit just to the left of my torn flesh. That happens when I understand you. That you have sound reasons. You’re too young. You’re too busy. Life has knocked you around and you don’t care for anyone much. Or you think I’m too snobby, or too trailer park. I’m both, that’s fine. You like comfortable people who don’t throw curveballs. That makes me blue, but it’s ok. I get it. And we go on separate and peaceful.

But the History Museum folks…the ones, not all, who decided I was bad. They found that gap in my flesh as if they were paramedics trained to triage in seconds. And then then stuck gnarled and thick fingers deep inside. And twisted.

“We should like you. We’re active and intelligent, we love the things you love. We don’t like you. You can’t be part of our club. You offend us. With your trashy books. With your impudence. With your childishness.

You talked about forbidden things. You made small movements without Simon says. 

You asked for help as you did it.

You don’t deserve help. You need to fail. Spitting and gasping and confused. We won’t even tell you to your face why we’re mad. Part of the punishment is your confusion.”

I watch the other museum folk slap it all away with a sigh…a gnat, not even a biter.

I bend at the waste and howl because o god how it hurts.

I lost my museum. My Brunk. I could still go, the Brunkers are few and kind. They actually knew me, and they forgave me for being strange. But the governing body will oust me eventually. And I cannot stand around and smile while they sharpen swords.

Though I have been told not to come to the larger museum that sponsors Brunk. I’m too controversial. I’ll upset the better, more valuable volunteers.

I lost my little shop. I lost the dried and stiff old silk skirts that I’d gently brush with the back of my hand. I lost the Facebook page that I’d nudged to life. I lost the joy in making sure whichever member of the tour had been dragged to the museum against their will found something COOL.

I could stay. Some would prefer, I was not without value. In fact everything I began profited.

But

I can’t work well if I’m bleeding all over the exhibits. I can’t teach a little class soaking in my own blood. I can’t giggle with the children over the chamber pots when every nerve in that wound is on fire.

Brunk House hasn’t changed, the quiet kind ones are still there, but I can’t survive like they do. Head down, make no trouble. Stay inside the safety bubble that insulates them from a sick society and a dying museum. I can’t get in those bubbles, they pop if I try. Outside of them, all I can feel is how much I hurt, and that it was done with intent or worse, indifference.

And if this entry was a bit milky, the thrust of it is, don’t worry about the fundraiser mentioned in the previous entry. I shut it down, it was too large and demanding for one chaperone alone. And impossible to do while around the people who fished inside my guts looking for more evidence of my mis-fit.

 

 

 

Pride, Porkers, Porches. Please.

It’s not a “bucket list.”  It’s my Rockstar Dreams. The fantasies I lived inside as a kid, clear into my twenties. I lived inside my head and though the rest of my self suffered for it, my health, my relationships, my strength of character, the interior of my skull was nourished and rich.

I wanted a boyfriend. Babies? Big house with a true true guest room. Friends…every stripe and type. A geological strata of human friendship. And enough money not to worry.

Mmm. I want to write about all the things that make me jibber jabber with excitement, and I want to write so well other people will want to jibber, too. And be professionally funny. I would like to be a New York Times bestselling author as long as I’m at it.

I wanna be attractive. Yeah that’s good, thank you Modcloth, Torrid, Unique Vintage and of course my girl Lena (known to y’all better by her misspelled on a loan application in 19-aught…Lane Bryant.) Also that Clairol root cover-up is worth the nine bucks!

Now what is left: I want to time travel.

Apparently this is not going to be conventionally attained. Not just because of science…but holy crap I keep forgetting the Earth is falling, hurtling through space. Marty McFly would NOT have materialized in 1955 Hillvalley, but into the cold vacuum of space where our planet had been for the blink of an infinite eye before continuing it’s endless descent through the darkness and fire.

So history then? Books. Antiques. Diaries. Underwear that people don’t wear anymore. Chamber pots and WHY. Bog bodies and plague graves. Old folks who would tell me stories of when the road was all gravel and Mama got Papa to buy a Dumont. But that wasn’t quite…Rockstar.

A museum.

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MAP! Of a sort! Yeah! Come visit Mondays and Second Saturdays.

One where I could use more than just the one approved sense that can cross the velvet ropes, sight.

One where if I was gentle, I could smell taper-neck bottle of the 90 yr old “Twah-lette Water” search for the soft clean undertones the lady who dabbed it once relied on against the August heat.

I could hear the parlor pump organ wheeze it’s perforated bellows. And touch, so careful, with the back of my hand, the silk which a small young woman wore on the day she became her own woman, as much as 1910 standards permitted. I doubt it feels like it did…it’s rough and dry and perhaps that is 100 years of entropy absorbing gossamer from the silkworm’s boiled and spun cocoon. Or maybe that’s how silk felt then.

The Earth plummeted, and I set my hand to my next gig. I’ve gotten good at clinging to those dreams, stretching them over the threshold into my reality, giving them substance and weight. They’re messier than they were in my small head but I am just a mud pup at heart.

I was allowed into Brunk House, a 160 year old farmstead near my town. The age of the building is significant in Oregon. It rains here and we made everything out of wood. Cuz we had just…gobs of it. Too much actually, for the pioneers who needs space to grow food crops.

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The Brunk Family built their 1861 manse, complete with outhouse, barns, grainery, machine shop, blacksmith shop…their 1000 acres became five over the years. The last bachelor Brunk uncle who stayed faithful to the the old dowager, with her sagging seams and beams died in 1974. (If he’d had a wife, I guarantee you a bathroom would have been built on. But Earl’s celibacy became our historic authenticity, bless.)

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The Brunk Throne Room. A visual I made to illustrate how to tell an outhouse from a pump house. Though back in the day, you’d smell it. 

The Polk County Historical Society was awarded the house. They kept her standing.

Then this Matron of Oregon Architecture lost her carefully tended facade.

Or…to skip poetry…the porch just fell…right off. Yes. Crumbled to bits. Because OREGON.

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Naked Lady.

The damage kept growing, and soon the price to fix her up was untenable for a museum that made her first tiny profit last year.

But I wasn’t a member last year. Brunk House had not yet become the Fender Stratocaster of my Rock Star Dream. Jimmy Hendrix had his Fender strung upside down to compensate for his left handedness, did you know?

I am also left handed.

My museum. For just three months I’ve been her champion. I built and stocked a 

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“Oh! I love a little shop!” -The Tenth Doctor

gift shop. I research to keep a hip and happening Facebook full of “ooo…facts about pigs? Imma SHARE that!” content.

And this. I made a Kickstarter, friends.

Not a Gofundme or charity fundraiser. Kickstarter is an investment platform, where donors help CREATE something to be shared. I’ve commissioned the requisite rewards…from a tote-bag with Big Chief Tecumseh’s Porkly Perfection (Oregon just lost our plastic shopping bags, and some of us are taking it rather hard) to a private party in a 160 yr old museum.

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Original Brunk Swag.

Kickstarter is also all or nothing. We have to give back the money if our goal (14k) isn’t raised.

I say “our” but lord help me I mean MINE. Most of the historical society are active and intelligent retirees who despise the internet. They don’t trust it, seeing a freakish invasion of privacy where younger folks shrug. That hate that if they look up “towels” on Google somehow the next website they go to KNOWS they want towels and tries to sell them towels. I’ve come around to hoping that the schematics used in the targeted sales will be sure and select the thread count I prefer. Shuhhhh-rug. My face is the first three pages of Google under my name, and yet here I breathe and live, hoping someday it’ll be the first five.

So I can’t fail, see. My Kickstarter, it cannot fail. There are some who want it to. Which saddens me so much. I’m very nice and fairly desperate for approval so people deciding to dislike me is infuriating. If I give them actual reason…well, to borrow from the Prophet:

Now it will come about that instead of sweet perfume there will be putrefaction; Instead of a belt, a rope; Instead of well-set hair, a plucked-out scalp; Instead of fine clothes, a donning of sackcloth; And branding instead of beauty. Your men will fall by the sword And your mighty ones in battle. And her gates will lament and mourn, And deserted she will sit on the ground. Isaiah 3:24-26

And no I do not think I’m being dramatic. The Historical Society is a ROUGH CROWD.

And so here, friends. Is my Kickstarter.If you can share, well, that’s how Kickstarters gain speed. If you can spend, please leave a note in the message section that you came from here, because that means you like my writing, and I’ll try and include a personal thank you in whatever swag you have earned (Pig mugs. Loaded Pig Totes. I have other things besides pigs…but you..you saw Tecumseh right? He’s so bitchin’ awesome.”

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IN CASE YOU MISSED BRUNK’S OWN “BIG CHIEF TECUMSEH.” This be the Porcine Prince.

I love history, I love the odd. I love sharing it with my readers. And now I share this. My Brunk House, my bastion against things falling apart, my staid spot in a slingshot universe, my Night at the Opera. Please help keep her in sweet perfumes and and out of sackcloths. Thank you. Brunk House.

CLICK ON THAT HOUSE PICTURE up there PLEASE!

 

Invictus

This isn’t a New Year’s Resolution.

This is what is whispered alone, only to yourself, when you’ve washed up on a strange but solid shore, chest heaving, frightened, shocked, but still alive.

You’re alive. You’re going to need to fight to stay that way.  Not vague, namby pamby promises. No. You are precisely aware of why your craft battered against the rocks, you know why you near drowned, you know well the thin gossamer of luck and fortune that let you live.

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Theodore Gericault: The Storm 

Your boat crashed because you didn’t make the effort to learn how a boat works. You didn’t pay attention to lessons. They were tedious.

Your boat hit rocks because there were rocks where you intended to sail. You knew this, but fuck it, you wanted to sail. There are rocks everywhere on earth. Not scared of rocks!

You didn’t check the weather report. It might tell you something that would make you delay instant gratification. So it was easier to not listen.

So you made many small bad choices and they swirled into a vortex and nearly killed you.

But you dog-paddled your luckily buoyant ass outta that wreck. Away from the splinters, the jagged rock. Oh they tore you up, yes they did. You are bleeding right into the salt water, it stings like fire and sharks are probably heading your way.

Now you are alive and the most important thing, friend, is that you get it.

This is on you.

I mean, your dad shoulda passed down a sturdier boat in his will. And your mom shoulda taken you for better swim lessons. And if never even occurred to her to enroll you in meteorology classes! Outrageous! They weren’t adequate parents! And if your friends had showed up to see you off like you were hoping the would they might have discouraged you from making at least a few of your stupid decision, but they’re all so selfish now, living their own lives.

And actually you only told a few. And actually you didn’t tell them when or where you were pushing off. But if they loved you more they woulda KNOWN. But if your husband had taken you on a cruise like he keeps promising you wouldn’t have had to show him your unhappiness by setting out in crap boat.

But now you’re on the sand and you’ve just puked salt water. And the sky is cold and bright and it’s just you. Adrenaline clears your head, salt water pricks your every scrape and scratch with a vital bite. You face a sky that makes you small as you should be, because you are not the center of the universe.  And you realize.

“I DO want to sail.

I do not want to sink and crash.

And it’s up to me. All of it. 

So…I think I will stop doing those lazy bad cheap easy things over and over because they added up, and near snuffed my life.

I think I will replace the things that weaken me.

I’ll start small…I don’t believe in sweeping out entire refrigerators and restocking with wheat germ (if my analogy strays now do bear with. It ought not be only an analogy). I’ll start with yogurt-flips and Poppables,

 

I’ll find a typewriter, electric Brothers brand, like I had as a kid. Clack -clackety-clack feels so satisfying. And if you store your inky, typo-coded pages in a neat yellow Peechee of old, it’s harder to neglect it and lose it deep in the parts of the computer you don’t understand.

I think I’ll join the historical museum. They need volunteers and if I’m there eventually they’ll let me touch the stuff behind glass and velvet. Plus they want me to write stuff for them. I frickin love history and the beautiful set white hair of the ladies who staff that museum. I’ll be there tomorrow morning for training on how to care for the Brunk House.

I need writing perspiration to trigger inspiration. So do other people. Ask if anyone is interested if a critique group in a community Facebook forum. Organize a bit. Three weeks later the first group meets tomorrow.

Have I ever asked another couple for dinner? I kept waiting for a big, clean enough house. Next weekend. Ask that new couple with kids the same age as me if they want to come. The husband had a black box with a blinking red light he and his son had built sitting on his desk at work and I dissolved into laughter. That’s a sign of the most secret and special breed of nerd.

Parent.

….. Oh that anxiety stings and suffocates worse than salt water in the lungs.

I will keep doing that, parenting. 

.It scares the crap outta me. Right now that book series I got Jack for Christmas is making me laugh…I think I’ll keep reading it with him. I like doing the voices. That’s parenting.

And so is just going downstairs. Go downstairs. I have set my life where I do not have to go downstairs. My family has gotten used to living without me. That’s kind of fucked up. So. I will go downstairs. And there I will pick up the dirty plates I hide from. There I might scrub a toilet that has gone petri-dish.

I want to sail. Either I do it, day by day, learning how to board a boat and what a mizzenmast is, even if it’s inconvenient, makes my shins bruised and blisters my hands. Or I don’t sail. I find a sorry shelter and survive under it.

But it’s all on me. I choose.

I am the captain of this ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wet, Stinking and Warm: Shrugging Off the Comfort of Depression.

Every time I got the front of the Suicide Prevention Chat queue, each a half hour wait, the system crashed. Three times. When you’re in a bad place you have a certain blindness. So I just reentered the waiting-line again “There are 64 people ahead of you….” over and over.

I could have used the phone number but I was afraid that whoever answered would be awful. I mean, they’re volunteers and trained, but years ago I called a similar help line to be talked down from a panic attack that was robbing me of reality to be told by a teenage girl who spoke in upspeak? That maybe did I have some music I liked? That I could listen too and it would calm me down?

I hadn’t slept in two days, my body jerking awake with every synapse set to fight or flight, every painful second. A nature show about bats sent me to the floor screaming and pounding our thin coffee table because they were WRONG THEY WERE WRONG BAD BAD BAD and I didn’t know why. I was displaced, this universe was not mine, I couldn’t wake up.

For 8 months.

No. No there was no nice music that would help.

The power of the anxiety disorder I’ve since conquered through years of work, is probably the main reason I forgot I had depression.

Depression is wet wool. It stinks foul, it’s gross and it presses on you too hard. But it’s still warm. And better than no blanket at all. Anxiety was my own brain slicing me to death, cut by cut. After surviving that, who cares if their blanket is wet?

I can’t tell you if I was born with depression. If my childhood incubated it. If something twigged loose in my brain at 19, when the symptoms started. Any of it is true, or none. Doesn’t matter my friends.

I have few memories of 1997, the worst year of my life. A devouring second-to-second pain and no IDEA of how to cope. I tried to sleep at night with the my thick green study-Bible on my acid torn belly…it’s weight a comfort even though it’s words and endless promises didn’t seem to do anything.

One memory was my older sister coming home for a visit. She was…not impressed by my affliction. I cannot remember my behavior…I thought I mostly kept to my room. But depressed people are some of the most selfish people, so it would explain my overhearing my sister scolding my mom in the other room.

“What, she just gets to act like that? Depression? That’s her excuse? That is NO excuse for being a shit!”

I remember thinking, “That is PRECISELY my excuse for being a shit! I have a legit goddamn doctor’s note saying “please excuse Therese for being a shit, she’s got no control over it.”

My 41 yr old take on the exchange? Ehh. It wasn’t beyond my control but I didn’t know that. And, some people take their bad feelings and hide them (poorly, it always comes out). Some wallow. They tend to get really mad at the person who chooses the other method. Also I was likely a shit.

But one good thing I learned about depression is that you can escape it bits at a time. Not like anxiety, where you’re pinned squirming and begging and slobbering with a huge butterfly pin through your gut. No. Depression can be reasoned with.

For me?

Food! I spent 20 years going to restaurants alone, doting on menus, filling up holes in my brain and life with starches and oil. I’d buy mass-produced powdered sugar cookies and rectangle beef jerky from the bulk bins at Winco and settle in front of my televsion, which was the other perfectly acceptable distraction, and what a sweet marriage food and TV did make. Since I was in a town that had ALL the fast food restaurants at 19, a first for my mountain-dwelling life, I ate tacos and chicken nuggets and fish sandwiches without ever having to leave my car. It was delightful. They made me poop blood at age 20…well actually it was a hemorrhoid that burst and forgive me for sharing this but it was incredibly scary perhaps you can avoid my folly. Apparently bad eating can do a number on your anus.

Booze doesn’t work for me. A telling factor is that I called it “booze.” I got some nice bottles on a wheeled mid-century drink cart…but I really just like the drink cart and want to show it off. Booze makes me dumb and sleepy. Marijuana makes my thoughts pop like bubbles blown from the slippery serrated ring of a child’s party favor. I hate that. I like my thoughts. Opioids…I has them. But I use them with disappointing sparity. And they take hard edges away. But I don’t exceed my prescription. Again, sleepy and dumb is the only result. They are no fun to abuse.

I assume I would greatly enjoy a nice Victorian opium tincture in a little brown glass bottle. Or heroin. I’m too lazy to make the first and just smart enough to avoid the second. Thank you Trainspotting and Requiem for A Dream. Your dank creepy lighting, disgusting set design, and judicious use of human flesh rot. feces and men screaming over anal dildos sufficiently scared me straight from the fun drugs.

I didn’t need all that tho, to slowly forget about depression. Enough things started happening. Good things and bad things and they all help my attention. I knew everything seemed much more effort for me than other people, but that wasn’t depression. It was just…Therese. I went to college. I fell in love and married. I had small children. Motherhood can be a drug of choice. Parenthood can consume you, all your frisson and energy devoted to this worthy undertaking.

Of course even with moderate depression, trouble starts up again as the kids age and begin to see your shortcomings and sometimes emulate them. Or worse, pity you. If you let them pity you, they will forever after seek their own dose of pity from the world, or find people to heap pity on. That frightens me, my friends. My children are smart, and if I teach them weakness and frailty, they will spend too much of their lives trying to reteach themselves.

But as I entered that less consuming phase of motherhood, I begin to write and succeed at writing. Now, this is good. Truly.  It’s an honest antidote to depression to be on your path. I was meant to write. When I do it, it is well within my soul.

But the success was a little too sharp. A needle of adrenaline straight through my breast bone into my heart. Similar physical symptoms to anxiety, but the mindset makes all the difference. Elation accompanies the rapid heart and fizzing blood pulse, not nameless terror. The crackle of electricity through your skin refreshes and motivates, and does not slice! Refreshing Amazon every 15 minutes til my little book stood in front of Hilary Clinton’s new release…if only for hours…no drug can replicate that high.

When adrenaline fades, you feel very dull and heavy and tired. Almost like a wet wool blanket has been tossed back over you. Ah but this isn’t (fusty voice) “DEPRESSION,” I thought. This is simply the boringness of everyday life.

So I forgot I had depression.

Now. You’d think the pills I’ve taken, never missing a single one for a decade now, would have reminded me, but honestly….I don’t know if that Zoloft generic even works. I take two every night as tic, a talisman, a prayer, and superstition.

Last week I listened to Christmas music…my iphone stuck in a little metal bowl to magnify sound while I wrapped. I love that activity. Since I was a kid. I love it how scotch tape smells with wrapping paper, it’s the the smell of anticipation and thrill and pleasure.

So I don’t know…nothing tripped the alarms. I don’t know why. I just let the paper fall off my lap and just…I became, for the first time in recent memory, crucially aware that I was not needed in this world and wasn’t afraid to die. And that living wasn’t…really doing it for me.

Of course that is a lie my brain told me. I am needed and I like being alive. If I DID take heavy drugs, the kind that distances you far enough from reality that you don’t think cause and effect matter, I wouldn’t have made it through the night. But in reality, I’m not suffering enough to euthanize myself. I’ve seen that kind of suffering. This wasn’t it.

My brain lies. Brains are assholes. Your mind, tho…or soul, or God, however you hold it, can be your best friend and true savior. But your physical brain is a conniving false friend. You think you don’t have power over it, but baby, that’s what that bitch WANTS you to think. Never let your jerk brain, it’s just an organ like a spleen after all, overpower your beautiful and supreme mind. 

I’d gone months with distractions. First time ever.  Not voluntarily… they’d just all stopped offering comfort or become too dangerous to continue pursuing. For one of the first times since my early twenties there was too much peace in life. So much SILENCE with just ME in it.

And I decided I would like to go to sleep and not wake up again. Bury down in that suffocating blanket and not worry about air.

And the Suicide Prevention Line wasn’t available to discuss the pros and cons with me.

My children saved me, of course. They have many times. The pull me out of my own ass, which is a blithe and deeply honest description of depression. Their faces appearing with no idea that I’m anything but cranky, the trust that everything is okay in their lives, and will be the same today as tomorrow.

Plus a quick search of “how does suicide of a parent affect a child” refocused the energy throbbing low inside me. Oh. I’d hurt them so much. My heart didn’t feel the burden of saving them, it was cold and indifferent. I even, as I sunk lower and lower, as the Suicide Prevention hotline clicked down, stuttered and reset…I considered I was raising them to be not very nice people, so my absence was moot.

But my mind, blessed and mine, snatched onto the opening paragraph of that particular website and nested upon it. 

Go to bed, said my Mind, who is smart and kind and the best of me and every good person I’ve ever known. “This might be PMS. Shhh shh I know that sounds dumb. Go to bed. Tomorrow we can die if we need to, or whatever. ” She speaks with a light and loving touch and I trust her.

The next day was life-saving. If you believe in God it will make special sense. I was ripped outta bed (usually I swim up to consciousness at my sad and pointless leisure) because my kids missed their bus and needed a hour long round trip drive out to their little school in the forest.

Instead of wondering about purpose and pleasure, my brain was told what to think. “Needed. You…needed. Keys. Pants. Go.”

When I got home, a friend was in a fix. And I could help. Helping people perforates the selfishness of depression, and spending time with someone who sees the good in you helps too.

The Black Dog didn’t want me dead anymore. He lost interest, went back to sniffing in the shadows just beyond my sight. Except now I know he’s there. And that’s good.

Cultivate Vigilance, not fear.

I have Depression, capital D. Don’t care how or why. I always have, I always will. I can not sedate it, I can not pray, diet or life-style guru it away, and no matter how many books I write or speeches I give, I will not succeed over it.

I will live with it. I was right before, everything being harder and heavier is just Therese. Because Therese, beautiful complex thing, has brown hair, latent snark, a tendency to hug people without asking, and depression.

But here is the lesson.

I have to work harder with depression. Not just in the way where you have to work hard to bathe and dress yourself, which, yes, that too. But that’s just treading water and feeling sad for yourself while you do it. And to feel sorry for yourself, ech. No point. I mean, it’s like getting mad at water for trying to drown you. Water ain’t got nothing against you. Water just IS. What are you going to DO in that water?

Do you know how to swim? This kind of swimming will take you years, and lessons, and teachers and books and near drownings. You’ll be too damn tired from treading water for a lesson but make yourself take one anyway, whether it be a therapist appointment, a book on peace of mind, talking yourself through fear without trying to distract yourself. Learn the dog paddle that will become strokes that will move you away, toward where you want to be.

And know it will be so fucking hard. And be okay with that. You will hurt. Pain is part of you now so you might as well pull out the hide-a-bed and make a suitable place for it to rest.

We aren’t fighters anymore. Struggling is…rare in this place and time. We’re so non-confrontational we don’t even take ourselves to task anymore. We sign the “Mental Illness” contract and relinquish control of  both that bastard trickster brain AND that soul that could save you, if only you trained it how. “Not my fault. I’ve a condition.” It may not be your fault you’re downing. But…don’t expect the water to accomodate you and recede as if by miracle. Don’t expect a team of lifeguards to charge to your rescue, because you’re not the only person they’re watching over. Don’t expect other swimmers to form a human chain and devote all their energy to saving you…you will just pull them down and they know that.

Swim, damn you. FIGHT.

I have to decide to struggle out of that bilge water. Or, to my other analogy, out of that warm rotting wet wool, and crawl off the floor. But please know I don’t want to. It’s so goddamn COLD out there and I’m already wet and smelly…I don’t wanna meet for coffee. I don’t wanna grocery shop. I don’t wanna to work on myself, my home, my job. To do that would mean over and over body slamming my naked wet self into the hard-hewn down that the rest of the world lies beyond, pushing it open and staggering out covered in bruises and splinters every fucking time.

So go back to your blanket.

And never, ever feel better.

Better to be shivering and stumbling forward than rotting on the floor, my friend, my own dear self. 

Do work. It will be hard. But every time you shrug off the stinking sweet folds of depression, shove through that brutal door, it will get easier.

You may never become an Instagram Influencer whose life is the clean vibrant picture of organized good choices. But you’ll be a very good version of yourself. You’ll hurt less and less. The vicious cycle will creak and slow and run itself down. You’ll be free to go in a path of your own navigation, one that doesn’t always end up in the same frightful pointless place.

One more note…take support from other people but be mindful that they are putting all they got into staying upright themselves. They can’t carry you, but they can reach a hand out to help you over a boggy puddle. Be grateful for that, it’s hard for them, too. Then reach back and help them across the next one in their path.

And call the actual phone line for suicide prevention. If you get “Kylie” whose volunteering for college credit, hell, ask her how she’s doing. Maybe you can help her with something. A small reminder of how useful you can be is worth a million calming songs.

(Note for Friends: I’m okay. I am. This isn’t a cry for help. Like I said, sometimes I just need to write and be heard so it can be well within my soul. This MAY be a cry for a few lunch dates and newsy gossipy emails for me to over analyze. If your in-laws are driving you crazy I’d LUVVV  to hear about it). But I’ve got “Gus”, I’ve got therapy, I’ve got ME. This isn’t my first rodeo. Thank you dear ones.)

Therese Oneill’s Gift Guide for to Show You’ve been Paying Attention.

Love Languages are the best wave of armchair psychology to hit the hive mind for years. Besides helping people recognize that they’re loved even if it’s delivered in a peculiar package, it gives respectability to my obsession with perfect gift giving.

Gifts must match recipients. They must demonstrate you took a moment to consider the gift-ee, that you’re have noticed them, listened to them, and like what you see. If you don’t know enough about your recipient, you must Facebook stalk them, noting team colors preferred, favorite charities, books, places.

Failing that, you must find a place that makes general pleasant gifts that have something extra. You can get a nice teak cutting board engraved with their family name, yeah…but ALSO make it in the shape of their home state. Unless you happen to know they hate their home state. Then order a round one and say they make earth nicer to live on. And the cutting board is earth. And the raw chicken to be sliced on it is…arhg. You’ll think of something.

So here are some stores I use to find perfect gifts. I’m not being paid for these endorsements. I damn well should be. But no, I present this is from pure love and respect. SHOP HERE. (All shops have plus-size options and almost all are having sales till Christmas.)

Maritime Supply Co

Man jewelry. My men don’t wear it, most don’t. Inspirational messages. Those are largely womanly domains also. But just because a guy doesn’t want to cover his facebook with Eckhart Tolle quotes about strength swished over a stock photo of a beach at sunset, doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish for inspiration. Maritime Supply breaks down inspirational words to their barest, clear back to Latin, stamps them on a minimalist dog-tag, and bam. A guy just might want to keep “remember to live” “remember you will die” “deeds not words” and “know thyself” close to his heart. And if not they also got keychains.

Svahausa.com

Okay, okay. Yes they’re comfortable and mindful and oddball-attractive. The dresses have pockets and that’s become a feminist statement (WOMEN HAVE TO CARRY KEYS TOO! Even if it ruins the lines of the skirt!!! And negates the joy of a jaunty little purse!)

But the patterns at Svahausa are the thing. They’re the inside joke, the conversation starter, the bit that speaks just to you. The purple skirt? It’s the Dewey Decimal System. The teal tunic? Its the freakin’ Arecibo Message, broadcast to the globular star cluster M13, about 25,000 light years away. “This pixely code contains basic information about humanity and Earth, including DNA, our solar system, and even a blocky-looking person. ” Even that little earth-tone clutch is Pre-historic cave art!

That’s the little extra I talk about when I describe good gifting. Also, if you get it for yourself, it’s a silent broadcast to people who like the same weird junk you do. “Excuse me? Are you aware that your skirt displays the geological strata of the Earth? Yes I think we SHOULD get married!”

alwaysfits.com

Kitsch, retro, general best of. Caught my attention because no other online store shared my devotion to Golden Girls as deeply as Always Fits. (“Dorothy in the Streets Blanche in the Sheets!!!”).

Out of Print

If you go to bookstores, you’re probably already familiar with Out of Print because bookstores LOVE them for little gifties as well they should. So here, you can get your favorite childhood or classic book on socks n shirts n mugs. BUT…they also have stuff that wouldn’t sell as well in bookstores, which make them all the more endearing and personal. “Animal Farm”…but the JAPANESE print of the book. And also these little libraries of matchbooks that are never in stock but they drive me nuts SO CUTE.

 

I bought one of these for my robot-loving eight year old. And everyone whose seen it, from 12 yr old girls to 60 yr old men have stopped in their tracks and desired to touch, caress and inspect it. I shouldn’t say I “bought one of these” because each one is one of a kind (mine was fork-based!), and We Do Art offers some of the more affordable ones.

 

It’s just a really good gift. All you need to do is find out someone’s favorite all time song, wedding song, or pick one that makes you think of them. Rockin Canvas makes into art that’s personal and pretty.

LookHuman

Look Human is quite sassy.  With a grand spectrum of sass, some bitter and tired, some inspired. Most of the designs come on a variety of clothes/decor. “Mess with the honk you get the bonk” WHY IS THAT SO FUNNY TO ME????

Unique Vintage

Here my chubby tribe, too many of you compliment my clothes but have never heard of this store. Like Modcloth, Unique Vintage has expressive, vintage repro fashion in Size Chub. Or Skinny. Whatever your groove. Though I did learn the hard way that the whole point of the flapper gown was to NOT have curves that rounded the straight lines of the look. Flappers had to be boyish looking because breasts and butts would protrude, and though they might look luscious, it also made it look like you were wearing your underwear to parties. Which is totally ok 100 yrs later so, 23 Skiddoo my lovelies!!

(Thus concludes A Fun Blog Post with No Angst. Deep curtsy. And goodnight.)

Fester like a sore – and then run.

 

What happens to a dream deferred? 

I can tell you.

The problem starts when you realize the life you assumed was just going to happen, like it does on TV and for your favorite famous people, requires a shit-ton of suffering to get. Years of it. And, you have to be naturally good at it, to boot. AND, lucky. All that.

So you started to walk an easier path, more realistic path. You defer. You choose rest-stops and sloped short-cuts that don’t lead to your dream. But you need the comfort those rests give you. You’re not a robot.

You didn’t follow through on that nursing course the old folks home you work for offered to pay for as long as you kept working…in five years you might have been a Physician’s Assistant, practically a doctor. But you’d never have any time to relax, working grueling 12 hour shifts and going to school. You’re just not cut out for that.

Even though the clinic gave you free birth control, you didn’t take it. Partly because you hate pills, but also you wanted to be a mother, yes, surely. You wanted someone to love and to tie you and your man together forever. Then the babies came and he turned into an asshole and now everything is about survival.

You get to wear an invisible placard now that says “Struggling Single Mother” or “Child-Support is half my pay check and I barely see my kids.” It’s not glamorous, but it’s got dignity.

You used to love to- but you stopped. Writing. Music. Marriage. God. Art. Computers. Creating. Forward Motion.

But those things gave up on you, too. You’d write great stories but no one wanted to read them. You didn’t have the money or business know-how to sell stuff on Etsy, they purposefully make it hard. And God wasn’t answering your questions, at least not ones requiring more than the yes/no variety of answer He seems to favor.

Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun? 

Forget it. Rent’s due. Everything is due. Kids need stuff. Just quiet, please just shut up and give me silence. Reality time. Truth is they call them

dreams for a reason, dumbass. You were never meant be that person. Even close to that person.  Act like a grownup. Forget that shit and try to be happy with what you got. But still wince when you hear the successes of old high school friends.

Or fester like a sore – and then run.

 

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Overwhelmed Art Print
Designed by 

 

This is a shitty world, you can’t believe how shortsighted and ignorant you were as a kid, before the universe used you for a punching bag. You’re hot and thrumming with constant undercurrents of anger and fear now. You need to be, keeps you on your toes, otherwise you’ll get eaten alive by this sick society.

Does it stink like rotten meat?

You can block it out, the debt. The mess. The unreliable car and the backed up septic. The smell of cat piss in carpet. Shit’s falling apart everywhere but what can you do? You can’t afford to put it back together. You’ve got slipped discs, it’s hard to even do simple stuff. In fact you’re practically sick all the time. See, that’s what you get for trying to do honest work. Now you’re fucking crippled by back pain and people think you’re lazy and don’t participate but they don’t understand how fucking HARD it all is. It’s not like you’re loving this. You could clean up, but that doesn’t fix plumbing. You could get another job, but whose hiring? Fuck it. Just…fuck it.

Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet.

What you were gonna be is so far away from who you are that it doesn’t hurt to fantasize about it anymore. What would your Oscar acceptance speech be like? All those people loving you for just existing…wow. How would you decorate that perfect house in the woods? You can spend hours reading about beautiful people, looking at their homes and spouses, and even a few exposed secrets, hours decorating a dream house on an $2.99 app. It’s sweet, it helps. In fact you spend a lot of time sitting outside your reality. The pills help, too. The wine is delightful. Binge watching and binge eating sound funner than they are. But it’s affordable and you can do it with the kids around. And it helps you forget you’ve run out of things to look forward to.

Maybe it just sags, like a heavy load. 

No light. No air. No point. Trapped by it. By what? Everything. Everything gone wrong in your life. Who even remembers the first domino, the first time life fucked you over and you didn’t have the resources to fight back. Or stand back up. Just stay down. Stay down here it hurts less down here. Stay down under it all, let it press. You’re trapped, but your free from ever having to think about that stupid dream life again. All anyone expects from you is to survive.

Or does it explode? 

 

artist unknown

“Pain is Inevitable. Suffering is Required.”

Well I’m scared, is all.

The pain is coming, and I’m all out of ideas.

First, there was what Breezy said last year in my red whore-house chair. Breezy was my not-quite-friend when we were 13. She didn’t laugh enough at my Star Trek:TNG jokes and she liked Randy Travis so there was little to build on. Now we are friends, because we are 40 and we have plenty enough in common.  For instance, we both think the world is a sharp dangerous place and we’re trying to soften it. She’s a social worker. I tell people about old tyme vaginas. Ehh. From each according to her ability…

She told me that addiction doesn’t go away unless you accept life has suffering, which no one ever does if they can avoid it, or find a new addiction to replace it. Alcoholics start over-eating. Gastric bypass patients start over-spending. People in chronic debt start gambling. Or perhaps they simply snuggle down into the fetid comfort of being the victim of all things, illnesses and exes. You keep going until one of your darlings slay you.

desperation_victimhood
BY diegotiziani

Even smaller addictions can work if they distract enough. Your religion. Wrapping your entire identity in being A Mother, that’s a common and overlooked one. Your demand for cleanliness and order. High achievement. These are good things that can be pressurized so intensely that they become weaponized. Even these can become a spiked shelter to keep out the pain.

Because there is pain. There shouldn’t be, we keep thinking. I keep thinking. Our ancestors wouldn’t get it, most of them. Full stomachs, warm houses, and no one trying to stab or eat us. What…what’s the deal?

As for me personally, what is my fucking malfunction, I ask you? Basic needs met? Yes, nicely. American dream of loving marriage, healthy children, home in a pretty how-town? Oh yes, yes, better than most. ROCK STAR dreams concocted in your 6 yr old heart when you watched a full theater laughing at the same time to Bill Murray’s deadpan acceptance of being slimed? That one day, even though you’re squat and plain and odd, one day a whole room will laugh because you made them happy? YES, DAMMIT. 

And yet.

Therapist Lisa took me in as an emergency again yesterday. It’s been 13 years since she first told my sick spirit that I was not nearly as great as I thought I was but, with work, could be. You gotta love the handful of people who, after not seeing you for a while, respond to the news that you’ve done the impossible (“I wrote a book and it’s a New York Times Bestseller”) with no surprise. “That cool! See, I told you that you were supposed to be great.”

Then they aren’t surprised when you show up ruined, either. Show up over and over in fact. Cuz they know how people go.

When I come to Lisa in dire need, she works fast and efficiently and I just fucking hate her. Her job is to pull away every comfort and delusion that I’ve carefully built to keep the pain small. I have to interweave these bamboo pain-cages brand new every couple of years, with new materials when the old ones wear thin. They take time and effort, and they are precious. They’re keeping me from being bitten and torn.

She takes EVERYTHING. Other clients, this might take months, as they deny and reason and argue. She has to do it with compassion, without shutting us down, you see. But I already love and trust her.

So it was a South Tower implosion, unspeakably fast, level after level pancaking in debris and choking dust and loss, so much loss. At 10am yesterday morning I was a good person going through a rough patch.

By 11am I was wet and puff-faced. Sodden and silent. I was not

-trying my best to be a good mother – is that really your best, Tee?

-a talented writer…well maybe a little, but you ought to be better. Maybe if your ego wasn’t in the way. Your second book didn’t do so as well as your first, huh?

-smart…well…the word I was thinking of for you was “arrogant” right now, hon.

-independent; actually, desperate and greedy for constant support of every kind

-caring for others; rather, oppressing and using them

-deserving of my heart’s desire; merely, whiny and entitled.

That’s about everything I had. And chop, chop chop. With a “Oh…hon, Tee…are you sure about that?” shaped axe. Chop, chop, chop.

So she sweeps a pile a rubble that used to be Therese out her sage-smudged door. She’ll pull a rickety, skeletal reconstruction in next week, break down some more of it, and try to pour some foundation.

If you don’t feel exactly like this after your early therapy sessions…get a new therapist.         (HoboHeart Rage BY ChrisOzFulton)

If a person doesn’t grow like they ought…if their natural growth pattern is perverted and insufficient to sustain life, they get twisted and tangled. They hurt, consequently.

So, they either select from the many painkillers available to them, penises to Percocet addiction, or they submit to being rebuilt. Usually when the painkillers just don’t work anymore.

I wonder if this Therese gets to blog again. Write without thinking about money or branding. At least until it’s time to crash it all down again, time to bleed out the bad humours, time to smash the dirt-castles back to earth.

Here it comes.

Here we go.

“I Have Mixed Feelings About Urine in Sex Play.”

I’m not gonna talk about pee sex. Just…in case that’s the only reason you’re here. It was a bait and switch, lemme be up front about that.

BUT….if this were ten years ago…I totally would.

Today, come wander with me. As a favor. Because today I miss my old blog. The first one, that I started when I was 23 or so. I was anonymous. I ranted and bitched,  wrote about anal sex and selfish parents. I just upchucked everything onto this white screen: gritty and gross and good. Let me do that again today.

It’s a scenic path through a yellow wood.

I started to lose my domain over this domain in 2012, when Mental Floss hired me to write for them. Which was the best thing that ever happened to me. Babies…marriage yeah, great glad for it, yessir. But I was a WRITER now. And potential Public Figure. I needed to present a professional writer-y…stuff. Links to published work (I do not know if any of them are still working don’t check)…information on contacts and..just awesome…writering.

Out of respect for my extended family, the small bit that remained, I scrubbed them from any and every entry, no matter how innocuous. I didn’t know all those years ago that when a loved family told me I’d better not put a word about him or his in print, it would be the last time I ever heard his voice.

He’s not dead or anything. I don’t think. Just quite determined. He’ll give me no fodder for my sick loud mind. Which he should have thought of 41 years ago. BUT…no matter. I leave them be now best I can. Sometimes our lives overlap in the past, can’t be helped. My memories are mine no matter who else cameos. And, turns out all that remaining family…ehh…none of them ever liked me and I best leave them be. Because I can totally handle that sort of thing, so deep is my maturity and security.  (Yes I’m TOTALLY over it it’s been seven years how could I not have moved on? No, shut up, YOU’RE crying. FAMILIAL LOVE IS A LIE FOR THE WEAK!) Though, I have started getting pissed off at any novel involving a storyline where a protective older sibling will face torment to protect their little sister. I have not seen that much in life. Have you? Granted those sisters are usually far more enchanting than I’ve ever been. I’m annoying, and have resting “I’m a better person than you” smug-face. Which, if you stay with me, I will show you. This trail is alllll gonna circle round, guys.

(None the less,  fuck you Katniss. It’s my experience that in real life you’d be high-fiving Gale and going to buy vape pens at The Hob once Prim was called for Hunger Games. No YOU’RE bitter.)

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“Try to avoid the bees…I’ve heard they’re just the worst. I’m taking ALLLL your stuff.”

So I stopped free-bleeding over my keyboard once I was “A Writer.” But still I wrote for myself. Bold (almost) as you please. I never tried to hard to cover up the people I was writing about because I have always been certain no one is reading this. Three people. I dunno. My old English teacher reads it. Bless.

But then I wrote Unmentionable and I had a good literary agent. She reinforced to me that there were things I couldn’t do anymore if I wanted to be successful. No matter how satirical OR soundly researched my argument for “Romanian Orphans are the WORST” or “I Have Mixed Feelings About Urine in Sex Play”….just don’t. Don’t alienate readers.

Well crap.

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Snore.

Fucking FABULOUS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only reason I can write well at all is because of 40 years of alienation. Of being out of step and saying wrong things and disagreeing with people. My values have always been askew of the norm. All the girls in seventh grade are snap-crotch bodysuits tucked into jeans? Well, I dressed like Dorothy from Golden Girls except with more suede rhinestones so excuse me while I fashion slam your tight healthy little bodies, bitches. Everyone trading Mariah Carey CDs in the dorm? Fine…more Weird Al and 80’s stand up comedy cassette tapes for me and my Walkman that works if I tape down the play button! Finding your khaki-panted Engineering major soul mates right and left at this religious college? Well imma bide my time…til I find an equally chubby and awkward companion on my 1998 dial up internet – and until then I got this bulk bin beef jerky and six bootleg seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS!

Oh, but I puff up and posture. I was discontented being outside. I tried early and often to  fit. At 13 I met a girl at camp and I just…spent two days faking my way through being really into Brenda and Dylan’s sexual tension along with the rest of the (original) 90210 gang. And if I could have made a go of it I woulda. But I could not. It was. So. Boring. And it’s all she had on offer. That and some stuff about curling irons, how shorts should be rolled…something about Amy Grant? 

I offered characters and episodes from Classic Star Trek or A-Team favorites as an alternative and then we were not friends. I said the wrong stuff and alienated her.

So that’s why I don’t write much here anymore, when once upon a time I had to force myself not to do more than three times a week. Cuz I have to write smooth now, not torn and sassed up and in clashing color.

And that tends to be dull.

Not everyone thinks that way. In fact most people prefer smooth. This really clicked last week driving with a friend through a newly constructed Snob Hill one town over…4000 sqr foot houses made of pressed fiber walls and heated tile floors and really intense wainscoting.

Credit: McMansionHell.com

Inside, pick your signature decor theme (please select from the following : “All My Furniture is Expensive but Rubbed with Sandpaper so it Looks Like I live in a Depression-Era Oklahoma Farmhouse-theme,” “My House is Actually A Dickensian Button and Brick Factory-theme” or “Jesus and His Terrific Handwriting Have Blessed This Home-theme.”

 

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Your 3 decor options: Depression-Era Okie, Dickensian Brick Factory, or Jesus Has Blessed All my White Furniture.

We came up with a term, my friend and I.

“Highest Lowest Common Denominator.” The very best of the most common.  And say “common” with a snobby 19th century British accent cuz that’s kinda how we meant it.

It’s not just houses. It’s Seinfeld and The Office.

 

It’s when your favorite poem is “Footprints” or the Frost poem about Two Roads. Oh that’s everyone’s favorite!

It’s Katy Perry and Elton John and Nicolas Sparks and only knowing three Bible stories in which you leave out all the unseemly parts (“Wait…so God tortured Job just to prove a point to Satan? Why was He trying to prove anything to Satan? Wait I know he got NEW kids but what about all the ones the house fell on? Did they at least go to heaven???”)

I know there is nothing wrong with liking them. They’re popular because they’re GOOD. (I think Two Roads is probably the best poem in the world, and I’ve got a framed sheet music of “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues” over my bed.)

But they’re smooth. No matter what you’re made of, whether it’s scratchy country wool or Gucci water-colored silk…you aren’t gonna get snagged or snarled. You won’t be offended, you won’t be terribly challenged. You won’t disagree. You won’t start thinking.

So my blog is a saucy Thomas Kincade now.  A grimdark Archie Comic reboot. A Camry.

Ok ok. And who am I to tell you that you need to think more?

Someone with a bit of spare time on her pudgy hands, I tell you what.

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Chronic “Resting Smug Face.”

Most of the people who live these “common denominator” lives…their lives are anything but smooth. In fact most would tell me that I may directly make violent love to myself with a garden trowel if I think I’m better than them because I know three African American Poets who aren’t Maya Angelou and my faux tiger-skin office chair is meant IRONIC.

A nurse who comes home tired after her 3/12’s…she’s probably not really interested in scouring Electric Literature for the newest, most challenging novels depicting feminism in third world countries. She wants fucking Nicolas Sparks because she’s had plenty of drama and brain-work today; she saved three lives and cleaned 18 butts today. There is a book out there she’d like better, in our overstuffed world there simply must be, but she’s not inclined to scratch it out of the trenches of literary criticism: the reward is simply not worth the effort.

Point is…oh where did I PUT that point? I’ve chosen smooth, well….textured smooth. Sloppy smooth. Because I grew up. And I want to provide the highest quality lowest common denominator you can get; that’s how I feed my kids and that’s how I feel successful.

If I could, o blog my blog, you’d be frothing. I’d exhale sick sweet fumes to set you on fire with anger, mistakes, ugly things, wrinkled joys. My sin eater, my confessional.

But Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and I, I took the one that’s been paved with bike-friendly asphalt and little nameplates for tree species and it comes out in a little plaza and we can get some Fro-yo and that’s why people pay me to sit in my ironic chair, which is far more ironic that just it’s faux tiger stripes, and write things.

And that has made all the difference.

 

People will pay you to be inhumane.

The papers were not in the order they’d been given to me on the clipboard. The writing on them was a silent, jagged screech of protest against clipboards that are bigoted against left-handers, though I’d be hard pressed to explain how a flat board accomplishes this. I just know it does. Also, I hate paperwork. [image error]

I pushed the papers at the nice young woman behind the desk and stared into her eyes with the flat affect of the hopeless.

“Here. I did not do a good job.” It wasn’t an apology.

I left huge swathes of lines blank, testaments of ignorance. But they’re too blame too. Like I’ve got emergency contact numbers memorized in 2019. I did give them my social security number quite a few times…but I could not remember if the  first three digits were the same as my current phone number prefix…or the one I had growing up. I used both. They’ll sort it.

She smiled and said, “That’s ok. Anything is an improvement. Our last records for you are from 2005.”

I raised my arms up and slammed them on my thighs.

“Well that’s obviously not…don’t SAY that in front of people! What kind of irresponsible person avoids the dentist for 14 years! No. The secretary who was here before you kept saying that too, and you know why? Cuz APOSTROPHE. That’s way. She kept filing my charts randomly with or without an apostrophe in the last name.”

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I removed the apostrophe from my name because it made computers in the early 2000’s cry.

The girl smiled at me. “They’ll call you back in a moment. Our hygienist only works twice a week.”

“Why don’t you have two hygienists then?”

“We tried giving her more days and….it just kind of all fell apart.” She shrugged and left it for me to figure out the mechanics of a high functioning dentist office hurled into chaos by giving their hygienist too much power.

I’ve been with Jones for 19 years. Not every year. I like him. But I fucking hate dentistry. That spearmint and rubbing alcohol stench. The utter submission where you can’t even talk. I was here in this office because last night I couldn’t eat a left over potsticker cold from the fridge without reigniting a weeks long pain. And that’s just no way to live. 

I like Jones. He’s so happy to be there. He likes teeth and their owners. He likes the business he’s grown from a small shared office to a state of the art dental palace.

A girl who must not have been the hygienist cuz the odds were this probably wasn’t her day, xrayed my mouth, but not before I gently took her arm and said, “I never floss. I’m not going to. Ever. Ever. Don’t ask me to. Also, I rarely brush. I’m not proud of that. I deserve this pain, I brought it on myself through poor choices.”  

There. Now that I’d covered all those bases there would be no reason for anyone else to repeat them to me.

At least I thought that’s why I said it. But ever since I sat in the waiting room and filled out five pages of paperwork with the printing dexterity of a massive stroke victim I’d been naked and confessing. “Do you suffer from any of the following? Bad Breath? Mouth Breathing? Shortness of Breath?”

At a regular doctor you write down that your grandma had kidney stones and you don’t feel like a turd cuz of it. At the dentist…it’s time to take stock of your own life. And I knew an examination of my stores would reveal black mold crawling up the walls and dry rot on the sparse shelves.

Obligingly, the xray gave artistic gravity to my failings. A remarkably putrid looking negative appeared on the computer next to me…the teeth enormous and irregular, the pronged roots uneven, fillings showing up like missing pixels of whiteness. Plus a few very black areas that I knew were where my sins lay.

Jones works in an open office space behind his patients while they’re prepped…I could hear him telling the girl to retake the picture since he didn’t see what would be causing me pain.

“Jonesssss!” I called over my shoulder. “JONES! Just come poke the damn things and I’ll tell you where they hurt –  stop (parading my shame)  wasting our time!”

He’s quick, Jones. In 15 minutes he was describing the utter horror show of my dental condition as if it were the best National Geographic documentary he’d ever seen. That’s part of his charm. It’s not judgey when he actually seems to think it’s cool. But his steady cheer brought claws out of me to match my wretched incisors.

“What the f– what does “abscess” mean in this context?”

“It’s like a biiiiiig rotten hole where your tooth should be and there’s like a ball of infection growing inside it.”

“And it’s not IN the tooth that hurts?”

“Nope. Nope. The infection is strong enough that you’re feeling it in a different tooth! Nerves are really neat.”

Not my x-ray, but pretty close.

 

I clenched my eyes “You need to check all the teeth. They are all very bad. I have not cared for them.”

He prescribed antibiotics as the first step of a long repair process. “How long will these f– mess up by birth control?” I asked. A full cycle, he answered discretely, which I knew.

He began to get up, signalling the end of this debacle that was my mouth. I thought about how near everything I’d said in this holy office had been a confession. “I have done wrong. I have made bad choices. I have purposefully hurt myself for the sake of convenience.” And I didn’t feel…purged. I didn’t feel clean yet.

Which made me grab his sleeve,  I needed to flagellate myself more and I had no priest. I had to make it louder somehow.

“Can aggressive oral sex cause bruising at the back of the throat? And then you throw whiskey on it and it burns really bad for a week and feels kinda filmy but nothing else seems wrong? Is that probably from very very skilled deep-throating?” It was a question I had wanted to ask, honest, but I did it wrong.

Translation: “I am gross. I am not good. I’m not appropriate. I need you to know and I don’t know why.”

Jones always professional, answered plainly while backing his chair away. “Yes that happens. Fairly common. You may want…it’s…the tissues are very delicate and vascular at the back of the throat and it may not be the wisest…”

“But we figured out I’ve got no gag reflex and you just took away my birth control for a month….and when you couple that with my natural ability as a lifelong asthmatic to hold my breath I’ve got a real talent, man!”

Judge me. Hold me to task for more than the fact I never made brushing a habit.

“Which pharmacy should I call this in to? Is it Bi-Mart? She write Bi-mart on there?”

“It’s kinda hard to read what she wrote….”

Penitant self-flagellating before alter in search of salvation.

“BI MART.” I affirmed, done. Illiterates! Useless. Ignoring me, almost. Teeth still hurt. Heart still rotten, too. I launched from the chair and fell back into place because of armrests that are also bigoted against people who are left-side dominant. These people were not going to absolve me. They’d punish me, but just through dentistry.

Everything else I’m doing wrong, every other failure I’ve leaned into, every other selfish, slothful, greedy gluttonous stain on my life…they’re not going to drill those clean.

Only I can do that. But I don’t even think I have the gumption to look at the xrays.

Drunken Parenting and Potatos

This is too long and…strange? to be called an official book trailer. But my god I do love it, we worked hard on it. And yes…there is a great deal of booze, screaming, violence, and potatoes in my little movie but I was trying to be as honest to the Victorian Era as possible.

Also, hello! This is me!