Exhale

There is never really an ending to anything. Even with death, we cling to the memories of someone, death-gripping and white-knuckling them back to life in our minds.

I don’t think this was a concept I really ever understood until recently. There isn’t a finish. You never win. My friend Erin said to me tonight on the phone, “This thing, this big thing is only just a day.” It really is true. Whatever it is that is happening, it happens in divisions of time — seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years — and eventually, the one tiny moment is over, but the infinity that lives inside of it just leaps over to the next moment.

Whenever things happen with my exhusband, I am reminded, of course, of our past. Before now, I would look back into the windows of my history and the emotions would boil up inside of me. I would let myself be just as angry as I was once upon a time. The resentment and frustration felt tangible, much like when you wake up sobbing from a dream.

I’m thirty, no where nearly as seasoned or wise as I will eventually be, but in my thirty years, I’ve wrapped up experiences and filed them into the attic of my heart. In the past, I would look at my exhusband and his wife and a snarled scowl would appear on my face (or, if not on my actual face, certainly in my heart). And now, I find myself having overwhelming bouts of pity for them. How terribly unfortunate to have plowed through nearly a decade of hate-rage and resentment toward me, only to find themselves in a new space, feeling the same things.

I can tell that I’m growing up because I am developing empathy for my enemies. It’s a startling and uncomfortable and, yet also terribly comforting feeling.

When the bottom fell out of my relationship with the sociopathic filmmaker, I was ANGRY. So angry that the back of my throat burned. So angry that when he would come up in conversation, I would have to spend ten or fifteen minutes spitting out insults and calling him names and recounting for whoever would listen, all the details of how horrible of a human he was.

My friend Devon said to me, in those moments of furious frenzy, “Aw, I just feel really bad for him.”

FOR HIM? You feel bad FOR HIM? 

I’m the one that was wronged. I am the one that is dealing with the damage control over here, man… How in the WORLD do you feel bad for him? He’s a monster!

But now, I get it.

If I had a dollar for every moment that I tell Devon, “I get it now…” I would be a millionaire. Or at least have some money to take Devon out for a couple of cocktails.

But really, I get it now. I’m curious about other people’s empathy now and I SEE it in people now like I never saw it before. Colin is a supreme example to me about how to love people no matter what they do… He always takes the high road, always gives people the benefit of doubt (to a point, mind you. He has his limits like everybody else). But Colin even says, in the midst of all of this stuff that happens with my exhusband, “I can understand how he feels, as a man.”

If you had told me two years ago I would be writing about empathy and forgiveness and all of this, I would have laughed in your stupid, foolish face. I would have thought you were ridiculous and blind to the facts.

But … I get it now. Empathy really does build this strange bridge between touchstones in your life giving everything continuity and connectedness.

Closing Chapters

Colin and I were talking this week about our plans for moving in together. We have yet to decide on a plan, but we’re debating on staying in my little two bedroom duplex or finding a three bedroom house that would provide all of us with a little bit more room to wiggle (and maybe another bathroom). We talked about how hard it is to find a rental in our school district and Colin felt like we could probably find something kind of cheap to buy and maybe fix it up a bit.

Then, I said something that set forth a conversation that ended with me in girlish sobs.

“I don’t think I want to ever buy a house. I love being able to call the maintenance man. Not having to mow my own grass.”

Colin scoffed, not in a condescending way, just in a pure and genuine, “Really?” kind of way. He told me about how he had dreams about building a life in a home and filling it with memories, much like his childhood. His parents are still in the house that he grew up in… The room that my son sleeps in when we go and visit with them is the room that was Colin’s as a child.

The summer of 1997, I closed the first chapter of my life. The first sixteen years… Prior to that summer, I was a kid and all of my memories were colorful and vivid and so very… late-eighties and early-nineties.

I sat on that stool in Colin’s kitchen and told him about all of these little snippets of memories…

The bush that was next to the back deck stairs, leading down to the brick patio was overgrown. My dad, never a real champion of the landscaping arts, decided to trim this bush. He had some of those cartoonishly large hedge clippers that look like nosehair scissors for giants. And he went at it one Sunday afternoon until there was nothing left but a twisted, leafless stick-bush. I recall actually teasing him, in all my prepubescent comic genius.

We giggled about this, as I wiped away the uncontrollable tears. He stroked my hair as I sat, slumped into his shoulder, totally bewildered as to where this surge of emotion was coming from.

My brother ran away from home once, while we were home being babysat. He packed a bindle with canned food and no can opener, put on a ski mask (it was summer… in Georgia!) and walked up a block into the cul-de-sac and went down the cut-through trail that we used to walk to get to our friend’s neighborhood pool. He came home unharmed but, without fail, we bring it up at every holiday gathering and tease him mercilessly.

And then, the summer of 1997, we moved. I went to church camp for two weeks in one house and when I got home, our house had sold and we were in a new one in one of those manufactured 1990′s neighborhoods where they bulldoze everything and plant little saplings along the sidewalked streets. My dog had been put to sleep after his quality of life went totally downhill. I also got baptized that summer, fully indoctrinated into a flawed religious system.

In my old room, the walls around my posters were smoke-stained from incense and candle burning… I had glow in the dark stars on the popcorn ceiling and a bead curtain hanging in the doorway. Our carpets were worn and brown. In my new house, the walls were white. The ceilings were smooth, the carpets were plush and green. It was a blank slate and it didn’t feel like mine.

I lost my innocence that summer… My childhood ended. I don’t have vivid memories of that neighborhood. My memories in my teenage years circled around high school and varsity sports. It was the end of that chapter.

The next fifteen years would be full of bad choices, mistakes, a failed marriage, a messy divorce, custody battles, mediation in stiffly furnished conference rooms… And then after enough of that garbage, some good things near the end like professional success, finding real love, reconnecting with family and building solid friendships in a community unlike anything I had ever experienced as an adult.

This summer, when Colin and I move in together and later, this fall, when we get married, it’ll be the start of a new chapter… Another fifteen years or so of a life that is incredibly different than the last decade and a half. Fifteen years full of our new family, maybe a couple of babies… Memories of Fourth of July Block Parties and catching fireflies in the dusky summer nights…

And maybe, I’ll be able to wrap my brain around buying a house one day… Maybe the idea won’t seem so foreign once I have someone that I want to make those memories with…

Sucker-Punched

I hate that feeling you get in your stomach when you’re about to be emotionally sucker punched. There’s no dodging it. You can’t bob and weave like you could if a tangible attacker were headed for you. There’s no talking it out. You just have to stand there, with your feet straddling the railroad tracks and wait for that locomotive to come plaster your guts over the rails.

I can remember two occasions, vividly, where I stood there with my back straight and my face stoic and took my punches.

The first time, I was 22 years old. A new mom with a baby so young that my house was still obsessively decorated with childproof bumper rails and baby gates. Barely an adult and shoved, face-first into parenthood with my then-husband, on the surface a family man, working hard to change his circumstances. Within two years time, he went from a green jumpsuit behind double-plated glass to a manager in a white-collar career. The poster child for first-offender-felons, he really had turned his life around.

Saturday morning, it was Valentine’s Day. He promised a romantic dinner at home that evening. Our son was not yet a year old, so there would be no going out this Valentine’s Day. Not like we had gone out for other V-Days, mind you. The first Valentine’s Day that we celebrated together, we were newly engaged (the first time). He bought me one lonely red carnation and Dumb & Dumber on DVD. To be fair, it was (and still is) my favorite movie, so the gesture was sweet. It wasn’t sweet, however, to come home from an 8-hour shift slinging lattes to find him and our two best friends hot-boxed in my bedroom, watching the movie. My carnation was on the kitchen counter next to the cellophane packaging. What a bummer.

I didn’t have my hopes high for our first married Valentine’s Day together. Even with lowered expectations, I was still disappointed when he didn’t come home. He went in for over-time on a Saturday. I thought that was pretty strange, but didn’t question his dedication to his job. He didn’t answer my calls, all afternoon and into the night. My frantic phone calls to his dad and his brother left me more worried and puzzled. Nobody knew where he was. I started to worry that he was hurt, injured, in a ditch somewhere. Then a phone call the next day, after no sleep.

And it happened. I imagined a giant, animated fist appearing stage right and walloping me from the side, my limp body curling over the oversized knuckles and then, rag-doll-style flopping to the ground. He wasn’t coming home right now. He needed some space. He was not happy.

I was at home with no car. No car seat. No money. In serious need of a trip to the grocery store (and the liquor store).

That following Tuesday was our son’s first birthday. He didn’t come back to visit with his son for nearly six weeks. I remember bundling up my baby and rolling my umbrella stroller down the street, in the gutter because there was no sidewalk, because we needed food from the grocery store.

What a mess. Such an empty, hollow feeling inside my gut. It took me months to recover from that. I look back at how fragile and weak and spiritless I was in that time and I’m damn near disgusted with myself.

Then again, the other memory that resonates in my head for that sucker-punched feeling was a similar betrayal. I had been dating the filmmaker for about a year. We ended up being together for over three years and I have never felt such a psychic presence in myself in any other period of my life. My intuition was hyper-sensitive and I never listened to it… Even when unflappable evidence existed, I held fast to my romantic notions of love and happiness with a chronically unhappy man.

I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping for air, a panicked dream ripping me from my slumber. My heart was racing and something, somewhere, deep inside my gut told me to go and get on the computer. I don’t really recollect how I broke into his email that first time (my intuition would lead me to this one more time, more than a year later), but I somehow skated my way into his inbox and right there, in plain sight, an email to the other woman. My chest felt tight.

“I can’t wait to get my arms back around you,” he lovingly wrote. “I miss your scent.” Romantic words for such an unromantic man, I thought. And, as if I needed evidence, I printed out this email and went hunting for more. I found, in total, about twelve emails between these two lovers. My printer ink was struggling to make the letters as I struggled through salty eyes to read, and more so, believe these emails.

I took them to bed, feeling floaty and out-of-body like a ghost. I sat up in the bed a long time that night, in the dark, only my bedside lamp illuminating the room. The emails were in a messy, strewn pile in the floor next to my bed and I recall laying there, on my side, staring at the pile and wishing I could just roll off the bed and into the abyss, like Alice… Wake up somewhere else, where all the rules were different.

I was pretty frustrated with myself in these recent weeks recollecting all of these horrible memories, plowing through my head and my heart like war-era flashbacks. I’m engaged! I’m happy! Why is my subconscious dragging me into my dark and unhappy past? And I realized that my body, my heart, in an attempt to make room for all of the good that is in store for me, was making space… Pushing old, dark memories out of my head to clear an area big enough for all the good that is supposed to be… Exercising the demons.

I guess this is part of the reason why writing this stuff down is good for you too… Even though I don’t want these memories taking up space in my head or my  heart, I never want to forget the feelings. I never want to lose touch with where I’ve been and the men I’ve loved and the lessons they all taught me. It just makes me exponentially more and more grateful for Colin every day.

I don’t care for freak bacon anymore.

I feel terrible for neglecting this space, guys. There are many reasons though…

• My exhusband regularly stalks this blog searching for ammunition to use against me in court — puts quite a damper on me feeling free to express myself, you know?
• I’ve been SUPER busy with work. Such a great problem to have, right? Classes are perpetually full… Clients are coming in at a nice and manageable pace. I’m even moving out of my home office into a REAL office in downtown Athens in January.
• Oh, also, I got engaged. *GASP!* So I’ve been a little over the moon, sparkly-happy and busy planning details and dreaming up what our perfect wedding day will be.

The biggest thing though, is that this space doesn’t FEEL like me anymore, you know? Once upon a time, Freak Bacon made sense… It was the only logical name for my space in the blogsphere. But it just doesn’t fit anymore. The only bacon in my life is the kind that is lovingly prepared for me by my incredible chef fiance (man, it’s still weird to call him that!).

So I’m trying to come up with another name for what I want my blog to be… I know what it will be about, so maybe this will help you guys come up with ideas, hm?

• I’m going to write about the blending of my new family.
• I’m going to write about planning this wedding.
• I’m going to write about my life in Athens, Georgia.
• I’m going to just WRITE MORE.

When I committed to writing one post a day on Date Wrecks, my readership grew by nearly 600%. This blog isn’t about traffic for me, like DW was, but I do still want to be a writer one day, when I grow up. Also, writing is so therapeutic for me. It will be easier to write more once this crap with my exhusband in court is over, but I’m determined to not let him have any control of my creative energy anymore.

So… help me name my new blog, will ya?

My Most Recent WRITE CLUB Performance, For Your Ears

Listen here.

Or on iTunes.

Expect more from me soon. Work is going amazing so, I’m hoping, time will open up for me soon. I have been writing so much lately, I just haven’t plugged it all in to the blog yet.

Soon, very soon.

What WRITE CLUB Means To Me…

Last night, on the drive back to Athens with my boyfriend, we discussed writing and the exchange of energy and the absolute magic of WRITE CLUB.

Let me go back… Because I can’t talk about how amazing WRITE CLUB is without first introducing you.

Last summer, I got an email from Shelby Hofer, c0-director of PushPush Theater in Decatur. Apparently, they needed woman writers for an event they were hosting and she had asked Hollis Gillespie, my mentor of sorts, for some suggestions. Shelby included me, with others, asking if I wanted to participate in this new writing event and could I please send over some writing samples.

Writing samples? Uhhh… What? Huh? So I scrambled for some samples, I’m pretty sure I sent over one or two Date Wrecks pieces and one piece from here and then I sat on the edge of my seat, pathetically refreshing my gmail for a reply. The reply was, “Oh, you didn’t have to send in a sample. Hollis says you’re good enough, then you’re in.”

Gulp.

It was my first time speaking in public, outside of my public speaking class in college. It was the first time I had ever had to write a piece on a topic, outside of my English classes in college. I was nervous and scared and overwhelmed. I spent days pouring over my piece, editing, reading it aloud, irritating all of my friends, “Would you look at this and tell me what you think?”

WRITE CLUB, at it’s core, is a literary event with three rounds, six combatants, paired off with opposing topics. Light vs. Dark, Chaos vs. Order, Fantasy vs. Reality, etc. Each combatant gets seven minutes, and not a second longer, to read an original piece on the topic they are assigned. The audience determines, by applause, who has won the bout and a portion of the door money collected goes to the winning combatant’s favorite charity.

It ended up being a night that ushered me into a new realm as a writer… Prior to WRITE CLUB, I was a girl that sometimes wrote. I had been writing my entire life and I was on the tail-end of Date Wrecks, a shockingly successful little project that took me by surprise. The thing is, as much as Date Wrecks was a part of me and reflected my writing style, once upon a time, I had outgrown it… WRITE CLUB was a big part of that process, of realizing that I was hitting the ceiling inside of Date Wrecks… Of realizing my full potential as a writer was yet to be realized…

As fun as Date Wrecks was, it was the kind of thing where… Hm… I had been doing it so long and it had, mostly, remained the same. It wasn’t challenging anymore. I could look at a Date Wreck’s Online Dating Profile and rattle off a laundry list of insults and wise cracks in almost no time, with almost no effort. Foolishly, I thought for a while, “This is it… This is so easy because this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” But after a while, I grew bored with it… Like an exercise routine that doesn’t even cause you to break a sweat anymore, I wasn’t growing.

My essay at WRITE CLUB on that first night against Ian was very much in the same voice, the same style as Date Wrecks had been. And I still I won that night. I don’t mean to cheapen the style of Date Wrecks… I don’t mean to insult it as “not art” or anything like that… It was, and still is, a worthwhile work. I had just outgrown it… And having a live audience was doubly as addicting as having a digital audience.

I’m telling you, the electricity that you feel when a room full of strangers howl at your jokes and scream and stomp and cheer when you’ve finished… It’s an entirely out of body experience. When I get up on the stage, the first minute or two I’m still a little shaky, lights both blinding and hot in your face. But once I hit the three minute mark, I’ve found my stride, I’m in a full sprint. I stop listening to the sound of my voice and start listening to the audience and the words on my paper start to float up and leap off the paper. The writing becomes me… The performance takes over me.

Maybe I’m partial because WRITE CLUB is the only literary reading style thing I’ve ever done… But I feel like WRITE CLUB is my church. I go through the month, plowing through work and my duties as a parent and a girlfriend and a friend… I might find time to write, but it’s always the thing I put on the back burner because, as much as it satisfies me, it’s a selfish kind of satisfaction. It’s not something that I have to share with anyone else to enjoy. Finding “me time” is hard. But once a month (or as often as I can go), I make the pilgrimage down 316, down 85, down 285… All the while, the whooshing hum of the highway guiding my meditative re-reading, final edits, nervous hand-wringing… The excitement of not knowing who is going first until RIGHT BEFORE IT HAPPENS… And then, Nick screaming, “Jami, are you ready?” It happens, right then… The magic. And the buzzing and vibrations inside of my body don’t stop for days sometimes.

It’s not just about my performance either… Being in the presence of other like-minded creative-types, exchanging ideas, listening and cheering each other on and going head-to-head, figuratively smashing one another and then afterwards, actually toasting each other with beers and slaps on the back. It’s the sense of community that it creates, it’s that part, for me, that makes it like church.

On the ride home, Colin and I were just buzzing back and forth, feeling inspired and chattering away about what writing means to us and how we feel so energized and renewed… I got choked up last night in the car talking about it. That’s the first time it’s happened to me. As much as WRITE CLUB seems to be about literary bloodshed, a battle to the death, it’s so much more than that. I could write and write and write about it, but you just need to go. You need to go.

You need to go.

If it doesn’t change your life, you’ll at least do good without being all preachy.

The Seven Minute Jami Show, aka WRITE CLUB Atlanta, Chapter 3

I have decided that I can’t wait for the podcast to go up on the WRITE CLUB Atlanta website. I mean, I went in the final round so, if Myke uploads the podcasts in order of appearance, I’ve got to wait three weeks?

No way, no how. My exhusband snidely called WRITE CLUB “The Seven Minute Jami Show” which, while hilarious, is hardly accurate. We’re doing good without being preachy, raising money for non-profit organizations all over Georgia. Have you been benevolent lately?

Here’s the piece that won last night. Winnings (when calculated) will be donated to Extra Special People, Inc. It was a packed house, so I can’t wait to hear what the final numbers were!

Chapter 3, Round 3: Creation vs. Destruction

Creation

The first thing I do when I get a write club assignment is go straight to Google, type in the word and play internet roulette. Oh, shut up. Don’t judge. It usually ends up being a pretty worthless exercise because typically, I have an idea of want to write about as soon as I get my topic.  It was a particularly futile effort this go ‘round because the entire first page of a search for “creation” brought me links from nut-job religious websites going on and on about creationism and how it ought to be taught in our schools.

Heh. I’m not going there, don’t worry. Biblical fairy tales are nice and all, but I’m taking you someplace better than the Garden of Eden… I’m taking you to my lady garden.

Yep… Because what other place to start with a practical discussion about creation than the horse’s mouth? Errm, I mean, my lady parts.

I was 20 when I got knocked up.

It’s your typical love story. Boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy leads impressionable and stupid girl down experimental paths involving sex, drugs and rock and roll (or, rather backseat blowjobs, blunts and Three6Mafia). And from this love story, a baby was created.

Ahh, yes. His little swimmers fought the upstream battle through my lady cavern all the way to fertilize my little egg. When you think about conception, strictly from a scientific frame of mind, it’s a pretty fascinating and powerful idea. Cells splitting, hearts beating, fingernails growing. All inside of me… The vessel for supreme creation, right?

But really, it’s not a skill. It doesn’t take any brain power to make a baby the traditional way. I suppose anybody with working genitals can do what I did. As much as I love and value my son, the action that brought him into existence was not romantic, beautiful or hell, even all that difficult.

The real manifestation of creation isn’t inside my uterus. It’s not in Genesis or the Garden of Eden. A real, true representation of creation exists here [touch heart]. It’s the kind of creation that is always beautiful, always timely… Perfect.

If you’re here tonight, chances are you’re some kind of creative person. A writer, an actor, a musician… a waiter. If you’re not, well… Then you’re probably looking around thinking to yourself, “Damn, look at all these fucking hipsters.”

If you have ever created something meaningful or moving or memorable, you have embodied the essence of creation… Turning what was once empty space into some kind of beautiful expression. You can’t fake it… It’s not something you can pretend to do… That’s transparent. A real true artist loses absolute control of the creation – it becomes bigger than them.

You’re the writer, hunched over a laptop, fingers precariously perched on the home keys, staring begrudgingly at that mother fucking blinking cursor! You’re stuck… No ideas. That was me at 9:00 this morning.

Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” You know that, if you just stick with it, you’ll be able to finish this essay for Write Club! Dammit!

And then it happens. The ideas are exploding in your head, your idle hands are now powering away, slamming so hard into the keys that the clickity click becomes a soundtrack for the symphony you are composing. You can barely type fast enough to keep up with the ideas… That…

That is magic.

There is something supremely amazing about the power in that kind of creation… Turning nothing into everything. Changing vapor ideas into tangible somethings. To me, there is more value and magic in that kind of creation than in a biblical fairy tale or physical conception. If you’ve got this gift, you rule the universe. You control that blinking cursor. You can lead us down whatever path you create.

It takes an innate skill to be a creator. It isn’t something you can learn (so, no… You shouldn’t go to art school.). It either exists in you or it doesn’t. If it exists in you and you feed it and cultivate it and express it, it will grow into something that is bigger and stronger than anything you could imagine. Writers don’t write because they want to, they write because they need to… Because that thing inside of them, that nagging itch that whispers to them, “Put it down on paper,” is stronger than their insecurity telling them that they can’t do it.

In the face of rejections and red-pen editing, we, as writers, push on… We continue to create. We look failure in the eye and resolve to write it better next time, to go in a different direction or just send it someone else because that joker that told you it was shit was probably an illiterate moron anyway.

The naysayers… The hecklers… Those that criticize our work and trivialize our skill? Those that, either by subtle force or outward blast, work to chisel away at the work we have done, which for most of us, we have been doing all our lives? Those people are weak. Skillless. Talentless shmucks.

True, it only takes a second … A tiny effort to destroy. You can spend hours upon hours working on a sand castle to only have the tide sweep it away in one crashing wave. A swift blow to the delicate structure that you have been working on and it, and you in the process, can crumble to the ground.

Words are powerful. Writers know this more than anyone else. And the right combinations of words can destroy a lifetime’s efforts. A stinging, burning reminder of your insecurity has the power to prevent you from ever reaching your full potential.

But only if you let it.

If you know in your heart that you have this gift to create…. That you have been called to create things… Every little asshole that tries to destroy you or your work is meaningless. It takes NO talent to destroy things. Those bottom-feeding, talentless suck-ass punks can destroy, but you will look up, surrounded by the rubble, clouds of dusty smoke billowing around you and you will smile sweetly. And then start again.

Picasso said, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”I don’t agree with that. Some of the most beautiful things that are created are spontaneous in nature… peaceful in conception. With the exception of Write Club, it isn’t a competition. You don’t have to destroy anybody to be successful. You don’t have to write better than someone, you just have to write. Real creation is above destruction, immune to it… Because no matter how many times they come to knock you down, they cannot stop you from starting to create again.

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If you haven’t already, you need to go like the Facebook Page for WRITE CLUB Atlanta and make it a point to come next time. It really is, as Randy Osborne so poignantly put it, “a hard-to-classify and wondrous thing for lit’ry types.”

Reflections of Dysfunction

I can remember the feeling so vividly… My throat would actually hurt, scratched from the screaming. Chest rising and falling in heavy, deliberate heaves from being so worked up that I had to take some time to catch my breath. I was angry and I had shown it…

Slamming doors, flinging myself onto furniture, screaming threats and I-hate-yous… Empty words thrown haphazardly, without worry or care where they landed or how they hurt. Teenage pouty faced, arms crossed, nostrils flaring.

For a long time, I thought my relationship with my mother was dysfunctional. She just didn’t understand me! *back of hand to forehead, realllll dramatic-like*

Getting older has taught me a lot of things, but this was one of the biggest lessons for me. Sure, my mom gets on my nerves sometimes, but she’s human and I’m human — it’s inevitable. As an adult, having had more and more interactions with other people in different dynamics, I’ve learned that what I had with my mother as a teenager was normal, shit, healthy even.

And now I’ve got a pre-tween, an eight year old trying so desperately to be BIG. Wanting all the perks of being a big kid with none of the responsibility… Storming off and huffing and muttering under his breath when he realizes that I’m not budging and that he can’t do whatever it is that he wanted to do… I’ve got this beautiful little bit of clarity.

Oh, the things my mother must have thought about me… The times she must’ve said behind closed doors, the laughing, the “bless her heart”ing… I’m sure I made her mad, totally… But watching my teenage body revert to a flopping, fish-out-of-water toddler-style tantrum was probably hysterical.

Hey mom, what do they call it? Come’up’ins?

It’s such a teenager sort of thing to do…

But you know how sometimes you hear a song and it’s just perfect? All the lyrics just totally sum up how you’re feeling about life right that very moment??

Heard this on the radio today and caught myself with my head thrown back, singing along and I don’t even know the words yet… Beautiful.

It got me thinking about how HAPPY I am and how supported I am… And how miserable it must be to be so angry all the time… How awful it must feel to go to bed and sleep all night and wake up with the weight of bitterness on your shoulders every morning. I can’t even bring myself to hate my exhusband like I used to… I am angry with him, for sure. I don’t think he’s being fair or reasonable. I think he’s lying and manipulating the system and trying to bully me into letting him win, just for the sake of winning, whatever it costs. And all I feel is sorry for him. Sorry that he’s so wrapped up in whatever feelings he can’t face and let go that he has to focus all of his hate-rage in my direction. And I realized today, he can’t pull me down to his level. He won’t make me angry. He can’t make me hate him because I AM TOO HAPPY TO EVEN HATE HIM. There is no room in my happy heart for that kind of darkness.

The truth will bubble to the surface… Be it now or later. It will be a natural rise and eventually, I think he’ll come out of this… He’s got to… I can’t imagine living your entire life so full of hate.

Mean

You, with your words like knives
And swords and weapons
That you use against me
You, have knocked me off my feet again
Got me feeling like a nothing
You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard
Calling me out when I’m wounded
You, picking on the weaker man
Well you can take me down
With just one single blow
But you don’t know, what you don’t know

Some day I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean

You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies
And your humiliation
You, have pointed out my flaws again
As if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down
Trying to block you out cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again
I bet you got pushed around
Somebody made you cold
But the cycle ends right now
Cause you can’t lead me down that road
You don’t know, what you don’t know

Some day I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean

And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion but
Nobody’s listening
Washed up and ranting about the
Same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how
I can’t sing

But all you are is mean
All you are is mean
And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life
And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean

But some day I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Yeaaaah
Some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean
Some day I’ll be living in a big old city
(Why you gotta be so mean)
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
(Why you gotta be so mean)
Some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
(Why you gotta be so mean)
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean

Here we go again

So my exhusband is suing me for custody.

Again.

The is the second time he’s tried to do this and each time, his litigious nature is made evident. He’s intending to wear me down emotionally and financially. His ultimate goal? I can only speculate…

My goal?

To not back down.

To not roll over.

To not be bullied.

To be an advocate for my son.

I’m not worried about my emotional well-being. I’m a tough cookie. I’ll do my best to protect my kidlet from any knowledge of this situation. But one thing I do need help with is this: my legal fees.

Last time he took me to court, I had to pay my attorney a $5000 retainer. I don’t know what my ex paid for his attorney, but I do know that, after a trial that lasted nearly a year and a half — in and out of the courtroom and mediation —  the judge dismissed all his requests and ordered him to pay my legal fees (to the tune of $17,000). We ended up settling out of court for a smaller amount because I felt terrible about the huge settlement and wanted to be fair. I used the settlement to repay my mother for the loan (that she put on her credit card — she didn’t charge me the interest) and used the remaining balance to pay a couple of bills down.

Altogether, I estimate that we’ve spent nearly $30,000 between us in legal disputes that he has initiated. He has yet to win a case.

But I’m all out resources. I’ve tapped my parents dry… The rest of my family are all working-class folks that don’t have money to loan.

So I’m swallowing my pride and I’m asking for help. I don’t know what it will take to retain my lawyer yet, but I’m going to assume it will be at least $2000.

If you love me and have been following me or reading my blogs or maybe if you just stumbled upon this page by some divine intervention… If you’ve got anything you can donate to my legal fund, I can’t even measure how grateful I would be to you. There’s a Paypal donate button at the top of the page. If you want to treat it as a loan, I’ll do my best to honor it as such — just know, full disclosure, I won’t have any substantial amount of money coming my way until the beginning of next year at tax time.

I won’t let someone with a bigger bank account bully me around.

Thanks.

My life… Soon.

Do me a favor and watch this video at full screen.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

That feeling you’ve got in your gut? That flipping, nervous, anxious, omg-I-can’t-handle-this feeling? It’s typically followed up by the holy-shit-I-really-just-did-that euphoria.

I needed a reminder of this today, faced with impending stress that is out of my control…

Mark my words: I will win. I will be victorious. I will overcome.

And when I do?

I will continue to take the high road.

To Leave Your Whole Life Behind

So, it’s official. I’m relocating for a positive reason.

I’m uprooting my family from all I’ve ever known to strike out in a new town (a small town) with different opportunities professionally, to be closer to my sister and her kids and to be closer to the boyfriend as we move closer towards making our own little family.

I’m almost entirely happy about this decision. There are so many positives here — so many reasons to be joyful and happy and hopeful. But I keep having these lingering little flutters… Like a spider web when you walk through it, you know it’s there, but you can’t swipe it away.  (more…)