The Bitter, Early

I see the bitter, early. It is a brutal inheritance I am unhappy to bestow. In the face of an angel, eyes sharp as razors, cheerio mouth howling long and full of anguish. Feet clad in princess sneakers, the kind with the blinking lights, kicking harder and stronger than I ever thought they could. This is nothing, I say. This is only an adult sized anger, teeming like a million fishes in a tiny bowl, over a question about apple juice. If she could access the words in her little brain - No I don't want fucking apple juice, you annoying bitch.

Then the other day. "I hate you." Calm and eerie, unsheathing a new sword.

"Why would you say such a thing, Liv?"

"I hate you."

"Silly girl."

It is hard not to react...hard. But there is nothing about hate that she can possibly understand. Is there? Do any of us really understand it, or are we conditioned by the reaction? All my "hates" are really only sadness, regret. It's easier to say I hate something, because it makes it other than myself. It separates me from the source of that particular pain. It's a detour, but it gets me where I'm going so much easier.

I have to say that I love the truth in my daughter. Everything is raw in her world. Every emotion is okay. When she says, "You made me mad", I get a chill of delight. For me its not about the "Why", but the expression of the feeling, so plain and entitled. So I say, "Let's draw your mad."

Picture after picture of the same face, each eye a sharp line, the mouth an "O", drawn by the unsteady hand of an angry toddler. Eventually the faces become happy ones, and she bounds away saying "My mad feels better, mom." I love this new ritual. I hope she can always "draw her mad" in healthy expression of unhealthy rage.

Otherwise, what will she do with it? The years of false injustices, unexplainable annoyances, petty disgusts, will amount to a bitter existence. And eventually all those pointy daggers will have no where to go, turning inwards, stabbing her own soul. No Outlet. It is an end I couldn't bear for my Olivia, my olive branch, my peace offering, my sculpted, tender avenging angel. Draw your mad, baby. Fill your notebooks. Kill a million trees with every harsh thought and despair. Damn, I hate trees. Always falling down on my dad's house and shit. The other day, another tree fell on his swingset. Now trees are trying to murder children. When I see those tree shredder trucks, it makes my toes tingle. Even in Lord of the Rings, I wanted all those tree people to get killed by the Orcs. Or whatever the fuck those creepy, hybrid beasts were called. Christmas is the best...tree after murdered tree. And then we decorate them with little balls and top them with angels and stars. Arbor Day is the worst. The trees have everybody fooled. But I know better.

FreeCreditReport.Com Commercials

I have a new favorite asshole. Free Credit Report.Com is just about the worst thing to come out of the internet since on-line predators. I hate the concept of being manipulated into thinking I'm getting something for free, when in reality I have to pay to "enroll" in their stupid program to qualify for the "free" credit report. I hate the jingle...Freeee credit report.....dot com. Incendiary, that song is. I used to hate that big-teethed, poor man's Prince William who sat in that chair looking smug about knowing what was on his credit report. If I was in third grade and seeing that for the first time, I would say, "If you love your credit report so much, then why don't you marry it?" Seriously that guy acts like he would fuck his credit score if only he could. Hate him and his bleach teeth and his outfit and his smug "do you know your credit score?" I thought I could never hate another human being as much as I hated this smarmy fool.

I couldn't be more wrong. Because now at regular intervals on my television screen comes an even worse asshole to plug this sham of a business. Why did they pick this squirrely, horrible man out of the people who auditioned? Surely this is truly the worst person you could ever select to represent your product. His presence on my screen makes me wish for death. His death. First of all I hate his shaggy hair. Second of all, I despise his plucky music. In the first commercial, he is working as a waiter in a restaurant, and he proceeds to play a creepily upbeat number about how he wouldn't be working there if he had known his credit score. What? It's downright offensive to insinuate that nobody would work as a waiter unless someone stole their identity and messed up their credit report and pushed them into the sad, sad life of waiting tables. Boo Hoo, you have to wear a pirate costume. There are worse things in this life - like people are STARVING to death in Africa, and being methodically murdered in Darfur. Get some fucking perspective. If I were those nice couples eating in that restaurant, I wouldn't let that vile man go within 20 feet of any of my food.

If that weren't bad enough, in the next commercial the same guy gets married and then proceeds to sing a despicable little tune about how if he had known her credit was so bad he would never have married her and had to live in her father's basement. What an ungrateful douchebag. Seriously, if you are that cramped for space and its so horrible living there, then why do you have your crappy "band" hanging out there? While your poor wife is stuck trying to do the laundry all around your dumbass friends lounging around and leering at her? Why don't you just leave if it's so horrible? Oh right...she's the girl of your dreams. You just regret marrying her because you didn't illegally obtain her credit report score prior to the wedding. How romantic, you tool. He should be grateful just to have such a nice, pretty wife as to not only completely divorce him on the spot for singing a little ditty about how much he can't stand being married to her RIGHT IN FRONT of her face, but still does the wash and puts up with all your douchebag friends taking up room in her already cramped living space. What a complete asshole is this guy to basically express that a person's value can be defined by a credit score. Is that supposed to be funny? Because its gross. And if they have to constantly peddle their dubious wares on my TV screen, bring back bleach teach. He's the lesser of two evils.

Fire and Ice

I'm beginning to think that the people I already know are the only people worth knowing in this world. Everywhere I turn I see individuals that bolster my inward desire to develop a bad case of agoraphobia, hunker down in front of my TV or a good novel, make some popcorn, and prepare to watch the greatest show ever - The Apocalypse, otherwise known as the destruction of all humankind (including myself) via fireballs and nifty explosions.

Of course, I know that the end of humankind won't be that simple. According to all the "green" people that have been annoying the shit out of me lately with their incessant whining about off-shore drilling and polar ice caps and paper plates, our world will probably end in ice as a result of our own arrogance and greed. Remember that Robert Frost poem?

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also greatAnd would suffice.

I can't (or don't want to) picture Robert Frost "tast[ing] of desire", but the man makes a brilliant point. Well, well, well... he's somebody I never met who was probably worth knowing. I have to concede that I just might be wrong a lot of the time. Of course, its hard to make any sense when my mind is so cluttered with angry and cynical sentiments. It's like this boiling rage bubbling underneath the surface of my docile demeanor and it's very distracting. I know that this anger is mostly about stupid things of little consequence. It doesn't take a whole lot to set off the fireworks in my skull. It could be a dumbass actor telling a tired joke on my television screen and all of the sudden I want to have a comedian bonfire. I might have bought a one-way ticket to Hell this morning, because I said "Jesus Christ" about 1,000 times when the woman driving in front of me was being bipolar with the speed limit (old lady on a Sunday drive one minute, Speedracer the next),. Yesterday, I broke a pen right in half because Livy was trying to take it from me when I was writing. I've taken enough basic Psychology classes to know that what I'm really mad about is something else entirely. I guess it's easier to be angry at the little things, then face the truth about my own failings and disappointments in myself.

I guess it is good that I've retreated these past few months. I have made an art of isolation. I am a mason, working hard at the fortress, using every annoyance as an excuse to lay down another brick. It's an ugly wall, but it serves a beautiful purpose. It's protects both you and I from facing the consequences of uneven tempers and the impatient, whirring storms of discontent. And for the record, I also hold with those who favor fire, but only in this life and not beyond.

The Carousel

Current Mood: The girls in circles and circles and circles again

Here I am. I know how hard my absence has been on all of you. I'm like the blog-writing equivalent of a dead-beat dad. And I'm showing up now out of the blue with tickets to the carnival and a million, shiny excuses. I come bearing gifts. And you just can't stay mad at me, no matter how hard you try, because....because....just because.

I know it's not because of love. Well maybe for some of you it is. This is always amazing to me: discovering that I am loved, even a little bit. It can't be an easy thing to do, loving a person with such a heart, so full of hate, a mind weighed down with leaden bullets of despair, ceasingly complaining, ever moaning, begrudging every single smile.

To some of you I matter for different reasons, I suppose. It feels good to matter at all. To figure in the equation. To curl up in my niche in the universe like a psycho fetus hacking away at the cord. I'm fucked up bad in a good way. And you like that about me. Because you're fucked up too.

Don't be offended by my assumptions. Consider the source. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. You are the pristine picture of mental health. There is not a single item in the the DSM-V that applies to you. Your Rorschach inkblot interpretations are all puppy dogs and rainbows. You would have punched Milgram right in his smug face for asking you to shock someone just for messing up fucking word pairs. I'm Not Okay, You're okay.

But I believe that we all got on a bloody carousel the day we were born. We came out of our mother's bodies (upside down) screaming at the top of our lungs. Why were we screaming? Because we knew something bad was coming up, innately, deep in the pit of our bellies. Round and round the horses go, as we sit on their uncomfortable saddles, with smiles plastered on our faces, nausea brewing in our sick souls, and holding on until our fingers bleed, praying for it all to stop. But at the same time knowing that the end of the ride will mean the end of us.

I don't mean to discount the pleasures that living affords us. But even pleasure has its price, as my expanding hips and waistline surely attest to. The author of that book, The Power of Now, tells me to stop considering the past and contemplating the future so intensely. To experience each moment as a gift, no matter how painful, annoying, uncomfortable it may be. He asks me to live each moment as if I chose the experience, the sensation, the feeling and to not judge any part of it. Which is a lie I will tell myself. He is asking me to stop the carousel with my own mind. That is the hardest thing anyone has ever asked me to do.

This is the only way to be healthy, he asserts. To stop abusing the gift of thought, which I do by using my thoughts to torment my soul so horribly. This makes perfect sense when I consider it honestly.

I'm leaving for the shore tomorrow, so again I will be absent. That is a good excuse. I'm sort of miserable about the beach sometimes, with all the sand and the seagulls and having to wear a garment that pretty much lets every eyeball know that I've been eating too much the past six months. Fuck it. I've been to a special kind of hell the past six months too. Sometimes a bowl of ice cream with painkiller sprinkles was the only thing that made me feel better. I don't have to prove shit to anyone. Anyway you all know that I can starve if I wanted to; you've seen me do it. I just don't care to use that particular "super power" anymore. Because it's moronic.

You know what else is moronic? The following two phrases:

I'm scared of clowns.

I hate hospitals.

I know this is completely off topic. Although there really isn't a topic to this blog when I stop to think about it. But it really makes me want to pull out my own eardrums with a pair of tweezers when I hear either of these phrases come out of any mouth at any time.

When people say they are scared of clowns, they always say it as if that is going to be surprising somehow. Like, isn't it weird that I'm so afraid of weird men with paint all over their face, big red noses, and synthetic hair the color of which is never found in nature? And if that wasn't bad enough, the shoes which are too big, which is supposed to be funny but really just comes off looking like a really pitiful birth defect. My point is, there is nothing about a clown that isn't scary. Everyone knows this. And ever since Pennywise, with his sharp, bloodstained teeth, said "They all float down here" and scooted around on that unicycle in the antique photograph, isn't everyone creeped out by the whole lot of clowns? The only person I have ever met that isn't effected by clowns is my granny, who actually paints pictures of clowns and hangs them on her wall. I knew she was in league with the devil ever since I first saw that. So I'm not disputing the fact that the idea of clowns is one spawned from the bowels of hell. I just think that some of the men who dress as clowns for birthdays and such are really just trying to make a bleak living and don't warrant our fear. So when I hear someone say, "I'm so scared of clowns - I have to leave this birthday party", I call bull shit because unless the guy has blood dripping off of his teeth he is just a man in a creepy suit. And I really hate when people think they are saying something so unique, when a billion stupid people before them have said that very same stupid thing.

As for anyone who says "I hate hospitals". Show me a person who LOVES hospitals and I won't punch you in the face.

And on that delightful note, I say goodbye. I know you will wait with bated breath for the next installment of Gwen's random thoughts. Or maybe you couldn't care less. I don't know. I don't care because I'm going on vacation and will be drinking cocktails at 11 am. And you are jealous.

Ramblings for Rainbows

The woman in the kayak is wet with raindrops. So is the man. We are adrift in these waters, two people let loose under the beauty of a pink Florida sunset. Nothing matters out here. Except maybe a family of birds mysteriously ignoring our stale breadcrumbs dissipating in the brackish water. I think of my favorite poem of all time, "Wild Geese", by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Everytime I read it, I get chills. Kayaking in the rain with the person you love most in the world for me is like a movie moment. It's like when you have this overwhelming feeling that you are playing out a story, and this is the romantic scene. You listen for the music, for it to swell loud as a soundtrack, but all you hear are the crickets chirping, the swish of the oars, the soft breathing of your lover.

I'm fully aware of my movie moment, everything in me is alive and full of the world. The world is not too much with us, as Wordsworth so narrow-mindedly opined. It is not with us enough most of the time. We have to go out and find it. And when nature opens her arms to me, I am eager to accept this embrace. Except if bugs are involved. I'm sort of sick of bugs and their landing whereever they want, biting whoever they want, crawling around on food at any given opportunity and having the audacity to alight on me when I was on the train yesterday. Bugs have some balls when you really stop and think about it. I'm more than ready for their extinction, no matter what ecologic consequences their absence might assign.

Anyway, the real movie moment when in my kayak on this rainy evening, transpired when for no apparent reason God saw fit to send me a peace offering...this rainbow clear across the sky, like a combination of dewy jewels, or a box of crayons dripping with tears. It's a small consolation prize for all the shit God's allowed to befall me the past few years, not to mention the existence of bugs that he still has to answer for. But it's something, and my forgiveness is easily bought, especially when the currency is rainbows.

You do not have the monopoly on adoring rainbows Lindsey . And as we have previously discussed, this affection does not make us lesbians. As for me, whenever I start to wonder if I have leanings in the Sapphic direction, I just have to have sex one time and I'm back to loving men all over again. I love so many things about them - things I will not detail here because I'm a really private person. Did your beverage come flying out of your nose from laughing too? Privacy is for cowards. Or for the mentally sane. I haven't decided yet. But either way, if no one was willing to lay it all out there and take a risk the world would be a pretty boring, Stepford place.

I used to conspire to take back the rainbow. Afterall, it was commandeered by the homosexual community without even asking the rest of humanity if that was okay. Not cool, gay people. Not cool. I've had some arguments with my gay friends about this issue, but in the end we agreed to disagree. And in the scheme of things, it is a small concession to not begrudge a battered and brave population such glorious representation. And I don't think my opinion matters much anyway. I'm like an army of one. And my only weapon is words. "The pen is mightier than the sword" is a phrase oft-quoted but really void of meaning. I get the spirit of it, and the idea of words being more powerful than violence is quaint and all. But in reality if you literally tried to fight off a sword with words, you'd probably end up with a stab wound through the skull. The guy who wrote that is an idiot, and the idiot, according to Wikipedia is a guy named Edward Bulver-Lytton. And get this:

From Wikipedia: Despite his popularity in his heyday, today his name is known as a byword for bad writing. San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing is named after him.

Isn't that hilarious? That little snippet gave me more joy than seeing a thousand rainbows could ever bring. That's what he gets for having two last names.

Who is this crazy bitch?

Hi. I'm bitter. I'm also 33 with no notable or worthwhile accomplishments to report. I'm in love with autumn, my husband Todd, my bratty toddler, starvation and gluttony at intervals, and raw and dirty writing. My sister, Amy, died a year ago of breast cancer at the age of 34. And I'm still pretty pissed off about that. I had my boobs cut off last year because they were plotting my demise with a BRCA2 mutation. I grew up in the doomsday religious group known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, aka "the doorknockers". If I ever knocked on your door at 8 am trying to sell you a Watchtower while wearing a prairie dress, let me extend my sincerest apologies. I spend my time trying to comprehend the insanity I see around me, undoing the damage wrought by my religious upbringing, bitching and moaning about inconsequential things, and attempting to find some sort of meaning in my life. This blog is my lame attempt to record my experiences, thoughts, and ideas. It helps to write. It keeps the rage at bay.

If you want to yell at me, praise me, proposition me, send me a note at Gwen6275@aol.com.