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Since You Left

February 1, 2003 was the worst day of my life, but I think you know that. I’d like to think, if the situation was reversed, it would have been equally as devastating to you.

You left.

I don’t kick myself because I had turned off my phone and didn’t get the call when Ellen made it. This wasn’t Dad or Gram with some warning that they were about to leave. You and I had a great conversation the day before. Truth? I was surprised as hell that you picked up the phone. That almost never happened. You know how, after someone has suddenly left, the stories come out? “Just out of the blue, Jeremiah called/dropped by/sent an email/text/Facebook comment and the next day, he was gone.” That phone call the day before was one of those stories. I don’t remember what the hell we talked about, except I was light-headed after giving blood, and you ragged on me for being an airhead blonde because of it. And I said, “Fuck you.” You said, “Fuck you.” . And a bunch of other shit. Our usual shit. I think I forgot to say, “Talk to you later.” That was odd. I always sign off a phone call that way. Maybe that was another sign that, no, I wouldn’t talk to you later. Or ever again.

It’s been almost fifteen years. I lost you, I lost Toulouse, I lost my housing (through my own folly). That was the last time I had a home of my own. 2003 was a real festering turd of a year. And I am not recovered from it. Your departure is still a raw, oozing wound. It doesn’t heal. It won’t heal. I don’t want it to heal. I don’t want to get over losing my soul sister.

Yeah, sister. You have one of your own. I have two. I think it’s fair to say, we were closer to each other than to them. I couldn’t and cannot talk to Kathy and Laura like I could talk to you. I was like the alien in the midst of the Thatcher family. We kept each other’s confidences. We talked about stuff that would get me puzzled and dismissive “You’re weird” looks from K&L. You and me, though, we got each other.

I don’t think it’s a secret that I needed you more than you needed me. You had my back. Maybe I took it for granted. Yeah, I did. I have no idea what it was I did for you. Made you laugh? Got you into some Lucy & Ethel type capers? I think maybe part of my ongoing, decade-and-a-half-long grief is guilt. Guilt for taking, for not giving back enough, for being selfish. I took your presence in my life for granted, and I also took it for granted that we would be on the Earth together for decades. 1979-2003, not even a quarter-century. it’s not fair.

You’ve missed a lot. You missed me coming in third on Jeopardy. You missed me on “Reba.” (and Ms. McIntyre was kind and gracious when I almost burst out crying all over her because you would have loved that I was on her show).  I needed to talk to you about what I saw of Dad with dementia and how scary that shit was. You weren’t here to consult over the issues that drove the final breaking wedge between the rest of the Thatchers and me. If ever I needed a soul sister, that was then.

You should have been here to torment me on my fiftieth birthday. I should have been able to mock you on YOUR fiftieth birthday. Coward. You skipped Earth before that milestone. Forty years was enough, I guess.

By the way, I’m the one who put the yellow rose in the bouquet that was the center of your memorial service. Ellen went along with it. And I’m sure you dumped the picture into that bouquet. Our final “Fuck you” to each other?

You’re the one who kept my feet to the fire writing. I should have been able to consult you about publishing. By all rights, the first copy should have gone to you, not just the dedication.

I still have trouble referring to those closest to me as “best friend.” That’s your job, and fuck you, Bitch, you quit on me. What happens if I call someone else “Best Friend”? Is she going to quit on me, too?

I’m angry, still. How dare you leave? And should I feel guilty over being angry? Doesn’t change the fact that I’m angry, bereft, abandoned. Yeah, you were over a year younger than me, but you had more big sister energy. I feel like I’ve been  cut loose since then, tumbling from a plane without a parachute in a high wind. It’s not your fault, but I wonder if I’d have been blown around so much or made so many bad decisions if you were still here. Or maybe you would have ended the friendship because I’m too much of a pain in the ass.

I don’t know. You had a lot of nerve to be able to get tanked, barf,  and not have a hangover the next day. Such a bitch for being smarter, better self-disciplined,  and more responsible than me. How dare you have your shit together.

Whatever.

I miss you. Every day. I just thought you should know.

 

 

 

March 13, 2017

 I don’t have anything especially interesting or profound to say tonight (except that I still have tickets for Book Obsessed Babes on April 8 in Jacksonville, FL and For Love of Books and Florida in Sarasota on July 15).

On the “So are you actually writing?” front, I have written 2708 words on a short story that is funny and sexy. I want to have that ready for the author signings this year. And perhaps write a couple more short stories, the idea being an eventual bound collection.

I moved last November from North Florida to South Florida to be closer to friends. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. My life had been solitary and isolated up to that point: mostly living on my own or among people who weren’t all that friendly when the chips were down, at a distance from the office where I was working (when I was working) or, in the case of test driving, spending 8 hours driving 300 miles around Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties then going home to a house sit. The center of my group of friends was 20 some miles away in the San Fernando Valley. I discussed this with a friend (who is 1800 miles from me): the scariest thought was that if I had decided to end my life, I would succeed because there would be no one around to stop me except myself. Yeah. Unsettling.

 I’m not trying to be the most popular person (and I am who I am. I bite my tongue a lot, but still…) and I know there are people who I like a lot and respect to the utmost who think I’m a loudmouth and a fool and tolerate me, rather than enjoy my company. That’s okay. I still like and respect them. I know that my words are better received than myself. That’s cool (buy my books. Trust me, you’ll love them). I do not suffer fools well. Nevertheless, I need human contact.

Since my move, I am part of a group of 7 people who get together on Saturday nights for dinner and some of us go for a walk at night at the local park. It’s wonderful.

I’ve reconnected with a friend from 25 years ago and she is still as warm and wonderful as she was then. My friend, Catalina Egan, known to you bookworms as M.C.V. Egan, is close enough that we can get together and do stuff. Author stuff, metaphysical stuff, just plain stuff. It’s excellent.

My soul, which had been withering a bit, is blossoming. I am grateful to be in this location, in this circle, in this situation. I am at peace in my life. And that’s where we all should go.

Peace and love and all that jazz

Peace and love and all that jazz

Somebody: free tickets! C’mon!

Free Range Woman *

(I’m trademarking that sucker)

Tis Mother’s Day weekend and  I am not a participant. I have no children and my own mother passed on in 2013. (She wasn’t crazy about the holiday. I pointed out to her once that she seemed to be as far away from her children as possible when it rolled around. She didn’t deny it)

I am not, nor ever have been, married. I’m not alone. (And I’m not defective, either. Let’s be clear) I’m also well past my twenties, which is the traditional age range for marrying and starting a family (although, that seems to be stretching on the back end onto one’s thirties). The labels women of my situation have had to endure are such quaint terms as “spinster” and “old maid.” Men get to be bachelors all their lives. I know; it’s an old complaint, but I suspect men are the ones who made the naming rules. 

Without the task of bearing and raising children, I’ve been free to, quite literally, move around the country, as wanted (or needed. I’ve been in that situation), pursue a career that I wanted as a child (without much success, but I pursued it), and go through some serious shit without worrying about dependents and what would happen to them. 

I propose that, in the 21st century, we shed the old, rather derogatory terms and replace them with a new one:

  

The Free Range Woman is just that: she is able to pursue her own path (which may lead to marriage and family even in middle/old age) and does so.

With the advent of animal rights, locavore, farm to table, food-related movements, “free range chicken” has become part of the lexicon. These hens are allowed room to be chickens rather than penned into a tiny space. 

“Spinster” and “old maid” are terms that have been around at least 200-250 years. They’re antiquated and carrying the baggage of patriarchal expectations that girls would grow into wives and mothers or be on the fringe of society because they didn’t find a way into the acceptable status. Think of Miss Havisham in “Great Expectations”: not being married wasn’t her fault, but the shame and humiliation of having been jilted left her mentally and emotionally stranded at that moment for decades. She had one job…

“Unmarried woman” brings up images of a Jill Clayburgh movie from the 70s and a line from “Private Benjamin” where Goldie Hawn, the newly widowed and unhappy about being single Judy Benjamin, wails “I would have been Mrs. Alan Bates in a heartbeat.” 

Free Range Woman also looks good on a T shirt. And may have mathematic meaning. (I didn’t do well in algebra and math, and my mathematic consultant passed away 12 years ago). 

The next time some dipshit asks me why I’ve never gotten married (A more subtle version of “What’s wrong with you?”), I shall smile and answer, “Because I’m free range, Baby.” 

Then end the date.

Maybe It’s Time

I’m not a cryer. I did plenty of it growing up; falls off bikes and monkey bars, losing pets, angry tears, getting reamed out by my father (my mother believed in “Wait til your father comes home.”), getting hit by my father, losing grandparents.

That was…forty years ago. The last time I really cried was about 10 years ago. It was when I took my cats samba, Cookie, and George to the Ventura County Animal Shelter to surrender them because I had no job, was losing my home, had no food for them, no money to buy them their food or medicine. They knew something was up because they all cried on the way over. Even Cookie, my Blue Point Himalayan who was a trooper.

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The black and white cat in the picture is Toulouse who had died two years earlier.

For the past ten years, I have experienced an unstable life. In that time, I have not had a home in my name; no lease, no mortgage. I have lived in hotels, corporate housing, camped, been in a homeless shelter for a couple of months, rented a room (and got booted from it about a year ago) , and for the past year, been couch surfing (going from one friend’s house until the welcome wears out, then on to another home. This is what you do when you don’t have the money or credit to rent an apartment or get a room even in a fleabag hotel).

I haven’t cried.

In addition, i haven’t had enough of a job to support myself since November 2013. I worked at a lousy job test-driving cars. It was lousy because the cars were “modified” to allow the engineers to install their testing gear and they disconnected a lot of safety gear. The drivers would report issues that didn’t get fixed. The hours were irregular; only one pay period was for two solid weeks, and the pay, though above minimum wage, was t enough to support myself even if I had worked a full 40 hours per week. Right now, I’m unemployed. No; I am not drawing unemployment. The why is none of your Damned business.

I still haven’t cried.

What isn’t in my car is in a storage unit and I am struggling to keep up the payments. This includes things like my bed (which the crazy ex-roommate wanted to keep in lieu of rent that was not 30 days overdue when she told me to get out by the 16th. When I said she couldn’t have it, her response was “Fick you.” Long fake fingernails and accurate typing on an iPhone are mutually exclusive). I’ve been living out of a suitcase.

I still haven’t cried.

Both of my parents have died since 2011; my father to Alzheimer’s (it scared the shit out of me to see him in the early to mid stages) and my mother to liver cancer. I didn’t get to say goodbye to either. I couldn’t afford the airfare for Dad’s and none of my siblings told me about Mom. Her wish? Theirs? I don’t know.

0 tears shed. I don’t have the time or the space necessary to indulge.

My books, though they do sell and do get good reviews (the only bad one I’ve seen was from someone who mistook it “These Foolish Things” for a book of the same title by Deborah Moggach (Ms, Moggach? I got the copyright back in 2001). However, they have not yet found their audience. The next two stories I have “bookend” the two published stories, but my laptop dies, so it’s been composition books and a ballpoint pen. As you know, I didn’t get to the Deep In the Heart author event.

Still haven’t cried.

I don’t cry like this:

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It’s more like this:

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Or this:

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Complete with snot bubbles. I sob and scare every animal within 5 miles. Humans can’t handle it (if I cried in front of my old man, he’d get even angrier, tell me to “knock it off” because they were “crocodile tears” because if I was really that upset, I wouldn’t have done whatever in the first place)

Maybe it’s time. I need another place to live, I need income. I need them quickly.

imageThis is Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith. If you’ve seen “The Secret,” you recognize him, his church is the Agape Center in Los Angeles and part of their ministry is. Prayer Ministry. You can reach them at 310-348-1270, I called them. We talked about my predicament, the fact that I feel like I’ve had it, my fears. All of it. I told her of trying to make sense of my situation in terms of a task to complete or a lesson to learn. I mentioned that I don’t cry. She said, “Maybe it’s time.”

Maybe that’s the lesson, the task. Right now, while I have a safe space, cry. Bury my face in a blanket and sob.

It’s time to release the toxic emotions and memories I’ve been keeping inside.

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Later.