I still would like to just wrap myself up in a blanket and stay in the bed… Cocoon myself from the reality of tragedy.

I don’t want to say that I’m having a hard time. That feels trite. My struggles are unimportant.

But I can’t even begin to catalog all the ways I’ve felt disappointed and heartbroken over the last week.

What I have sorted out is this: people are disappointing. Not all the time and not all the people, mind you. But, by and large, people are going to hurt you, disappoint you, wrong you… People are going to fuck up.

And there’s nothing we can do about it. White-knuckle grips on external things in an attempt to try to maintain some control over the external is worthless.

I have had something like a hundred conversations about mental health care and gun control, both online and offline, and the only thing I have learned from all of the conversations, aside from actually learning some of the specifics about gun laws/permitting, is that some of the people in my life that I consider friends — people that are important to the day to day of how my life functions — don’t care enough about our friendship. They are blinded to the fact that our friendship ought to hold some kind of value over “being right” or trying to win someone over to the other side.

You feel what you feel. I’ll feel what I feel… But when your feelings turn into sarcastic, mean-spirited, personal digs against my feelings, that’s the moment that it becomes clear to me that you really don’t value me.

That’s heartbreaking… And it feels trivial to even say it, but it just is really heartbreaking.

Prior to reading Erika’s book, The Power of Unpopular, I couldn’t put my finger on the philosophy that resonated inside of me… But it’s this…

Love, love, love Erika!

You see, on Facebook you can target your ads to specific demographics based on age, relationship status, location, sex… Even interests.

So if I want my ad to target 18-25 year old Japanese men who are fans of Lady GaGa, I’ve zeroed in on my target market for that warehouse of meat dresses I’m trying to sell.

Sometimes, these marketing types really miss the mark. Like that one time, I kept getting ads for gay marriage services? Clearly, it was because I just got engaged and I am a fan of equal marriage rights. In the marketer’s eyes, there’s something like a 42% chance* that those two factors make me gay.

*Real math, bitchezzz

Or what about this one?

Are you qualified to be a substance abuse counselor? Well, if you’d died your hair to look like a grey-haired Cougar’s stretchy pants, then, WINNER! It only takes one year!

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel a LOT more confident in my teen addict son’s drug counselor if they had “street cred” by way of hipster fashion sense.

Sometimes the marketers get it right though… Case in point, check out this sweet and bitching Kenny Powers ad that showed up as a sponsored story because my friend Stephanie liked the page.

High five to Stephanie and you, Mr. Powers.

As an online marketer myself, I think I have less patience for this bullshit than regular ol’ Joes, so I realize that my bitching and ranting about this kind of thing can be see as over reacting or something like that. But, if you’re not familiar with me, this is what I do… I find things that make me crazy and I bitch about them.

Some people like to decoupage. Some bitches like knitting. I just like bitching.

So imagine the furious rage boiling inside me when I saw THIS ad in my sidebar this morning:

I shared it on my Facebook profile this morning with this status:

This mother and feminist says fuck you, HipSlimmer. I hate shit like this — pressure on mothers to make their bodies look the same as they did before they had children. Your life isn’t the same, so neither will your body be…

Have we stumbled back in time? Are we seriously expected to start wearing corsets again? What’s next? Foot binding?

Dropping the baby WEIGHT can be a healthy endeavor, though I think it should be the last thing on your mind when you’re caring for a newborn. RESHAPING YOUR HIPS after your baby is born is a ridiculous notion that makes me want to shake the shoulders of every paying customer of the HipSlipper, slap them across the face and shriek, “Get a hold of yourself, woman!”

Obviously this shit is really bothering me this morning.

Oh, and isn’t it sweet how this cute young couple got their start? Her doctor husband worked tirelessly to find a way to MAKE HER FRIENDS HIPS SMALLER after they had kids.

Please, Doctor! Help me not be such a huge, disgusting whale! That relaxin that was released during labor is really making it hard to fit into my size 0 designer jeans!

For crying out loud.

There’s another notch in the headboard for the war on women.

That totally looks like the body of a woman who has carried a child to term, NOT a 14 year old girl.

I can’t even understand how a woman is supposed TO SIT DOWN in this contraption, much less spend the first two months of her baby’s life being worried about HOW WIDE HER HIPS ARE rather than, oh I don’t know, taking care of her baby’s needs. Can you imagine how restful that first two months of sleep would be? It’s already a crap shoot because the baby wakes you up all night, but with the hipslimmer, you can be sure that you will get ZERO sleep. Just think of how slim your hips will be, though!

I will leave you with the comment that one of my friends, Kit, made on my Facebook status about this atrocity:

Maybe the ad should read: “Look like a grown woman? Try and satisfy your husband’s pedophile tendencies by mashing your bones together!”

HOT DAMN, I love Samantha Bee.

Download It Here

Lyrics:

[Piano Intro]

[Verse 1: Macklemore]
When I was in the 3rd grade
I thought that I was gay
Cause I could draw, my uncle was
And I kept my room straight
I told my mom, tears rushing down my face
She’s like, “Ben you’ve loved girls since before pre-K”
Trippin’, yeah, I guess she had a point, didn’t she
A bunch of stereotypes all in my head
I remember doing the math like
“Yeah, I’m good a little league”
A pre-conceived idea of what it all meant
For those who like the same sex had the characteristics
The right-wing conservatives think its a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition
Playing God
Ahh nah, here we go
America the brave
Still beers, what, we don’t know
And God loves all His children
And somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written
3,500 hundred years ago
I don’t know

[Hook: Mary Lambert]
iDrenn
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love, my love, my love
She keeps me warm [x4]

[Verse 2: Macklemore]
If I was gay
I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately
“Man that’s gay”
Gets dropped on the daily
We’ve become so numb to what we’re sayin’
Our culture founded from oppression
Yeah, we don’t have acceptance for ‘em
Call each other faggots
Behind the keys of a message board
A word routed in hate
Yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is anonymous with the lesser
It’s the same hate that’s caused wars from religion
Gender and skin color
Collection of your pigment
The same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins
Human rights for everybody
There is no difference
Live on! And be yourself!
When I was in church
They taught me something else
If you preach hate at the service
Those words aren’t anointed
And that Holy Water
That you soak in
Is then poisoned
When everyone else
Is more comfortable
Remaining voiceless
Rather than fighting for humans
That have had their rights stolen
I might not be the same
But that’s not important
No freedom ’til we’re equal
Damn right I support it
[Trumpet]
I don’t know

[Hook: Mary Lambert]
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love, my love, my love
She keeps me warm [x4]

[Verse 3: Macklemore]
We press play
Don’t press pause
Progress, march on!
With a veil over our eyes
We turn our back on the cause
‘Till the day
That my uncles can united by law
Kids are walkin’ around the hallway
Plagued by pain in their heart
A world so hateful
Someone would rather die
Than be who they are
And a certificate on paper
Isn’t gonna solve it all
But it’s a damn good place to start
No law’s gonna change us
We have to change us
Whatever god you believe in
We come from the same one
Strip away the fear
Underneath it’s all the same love
About time that we raised up

[Hook: Mary Lambert]
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love, my love, my love
She keeps me warm [x4]

[Outro: Mary Lambert]
Love is patient, love is kind

Love is patient (not cryin’ on Sundays)
Love is kind (not crying on Sundays) [x5]

When I first met with Nancy back in, shoot… was it March? April? I can’t remember really when it was… I do remember that it was cold enough outside to warrant long sleeves but not cold enough for a jacket.

I met Nancy of Knot Couture at Gail K Fabrics in Atlanta. I brought my best friend Devon and my mother along. We had plans to pick out fabric for my custom wedding dress.

I know, seriously. A custom wedding dress? Who can afford that? I was pleasantly surprised at how affordable the dress was going to be, especially considering how talented the pair (Erin and Nancy) were.

I wanted a dress with a story… I would have killed to have been able to wear a vintage dress. But shopping for a wedding dress proved to be complicated and a confidence buster.

I’m certainly not a model. I’ve never been thin. But I fall into the unfortunate black hole between “average” and “plus sized.” Add on to that the fact that I’m only a few inches away from my height being a legal handicap and clothes are impossible. If it’s made for a petite in stature person, it’s also made for a petite in thickness person. If it fits my booty/boobs/thighs, then it’s not proportioned for someone of my height. You know how jeans have sandblasting on the knees? Well that sandblasting hits me in my shins. And I STILL walk on petite length jeans.

Sidebar: While measuring the inseam of my son’s pants with my sister, we got a wild hair and measured my inseam. It was embarrassing, but it was doubly embarrassing when my nine-year-old niece came in and had a longer inseam than me.

Anyway, shopping for a wedding dress at my size was torture… It was painful enough just having to go through the racks to find a STYLE that I liked, but god, holding a dress up to my chest and seeing that the bust line was hitting me on my waist…? Miserable.

In order to make a dress off the rack work for me, I would have to remove the zipper, split the middle of the dress apart and raise the waist, increase the bust and hem the bottom. Alterations that would have easily cost me $400-500.

When that’s my entire budget, it was hard to justify. So on my friend Suzu’s suggestion, I called the girls at Knot Couture up and we started plans for my custom dress. We started with The Sierra Raven and made a few adjustments to the design and then went fabric shopping.

It’s hard to imagine what your dress is going to look like when the fabric is rolled up in bolts on the wall, but Nancy was very helpful in guiding me on fabric choices. We settled on two fabrics (one of which was the last of a vintage silk fabric  and the other was the last of a kind of mod-circle-patterned lace.

Both fabrics, with just enough left on the bolts to complete my dress. A sign? Like, duh.

So in the time since we first met, Colin was diagnosed with two kinds of cancer, I settled the second erroneous custody case that my exhusband brought against me and we moved in together. It’s been a wild and crazy summer. But the end result? We’re stronger, more connected and getting closer and closer to the big day.

At the first fitting, I had that magical moment where you first feel like a bride. It was incredible.

And then, I found this on Instagram:

Oh, be still my little beating bride’s heart. The silk on the skirt portion has this beautiful sort of floral wrinkle (I’m terrible with fashion descriptors, clearly) and it falls just-so on me to disguise all of my imperfections. And the top is just SO sweet. OMG, so incredible sweet and beautiful.

I’m going to pick it up next week. I can’t say enough about my experience with Nancy and Erin of Knot Couture. If you need a wedding dress, you need to get in touch with these two…

We usually go to the Super Cuts down the street, but when you’re looking at a $4 haircut, it’s hard to say no. When we walk into the shop, there are six girls in there, sitting around in the salon chairs. One of them gets up to greet us and takes my son to a chair. The other five women working there are still sitting in their chairs, chattering away as if we were invisible.

In any other circumstance, I wouldn’t be bothered.

However, the conversation between these women was heartbreaking to listen to… And you know, sometimes you find yourself in a situation and you’re totally frozen, unable to figure out what to do… So I’m sitting there while my son tells the girl cutting his hair, “I like it with a three on the sides and back and just trimming on the top,” and trying to block out the woman sitting directly to my right.

“Her boyfriend is Indian. I can’t believe his name. It’s disgusting.” She states this man’s name and they all sort of laugh, in disgust. There was mention of how the boyfriend they were gossiping about smelled bad.

Other things I recollect, spotting on my memory like paint splatter:

“Indian: dot not feather.”

“…as long as I don’t know about him, I’m fine with him. Why can’t she find an American man?”

It was like being invited to a book club with a bunch of women you don’t know and then having to politely suffer through racist comment after racist comment.

I’m ashamed that I didn’t say something. That I didn’t pluck my son out of that chair, mid-haircut, and let those racist bigots know exactly what I thought about them. I’m embarrassed that my son had to listen to that kind of hate speech.

We won’t be going to Great Clips, specifically the one off Epps Brige Parkway in Athens, Georgia.

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.

I have many memories of coming to his office.

In 2005, I met with another lawyer in his practice that guided me through my divorce. He leaned back, kicked his crossed ankles up on the desk and said, “Alright, tell me what the bastard did.” He was hired that instant.

In 2008, I was here again again, this time to defend against a ridiculous motion for a change of custody. When we won the case, my lawyer’s eyes watered up a mine poured out a sigh of relief.

This is my third time making trips to his office. Every instance was an act of defense against my litigious, deep-pocketed exhusband. Between what we have paid in legal fees and what he has been ordered to pay in damages, we could have sent our soon to a state university for four years.

I recollect the panicked, scared feeling I have had in the past… This time though, it’s different. I’m not scared. I’m ready. I have my game face on and I am just waiting for the circus to begin.

Roasted chicken with a parsnip puree and a brussels and potato hash. He is incredible, right?