Blog

Hello my Cheaper Than Therapy family! It has been almost a year since I last put fingertips to keyboard to connect with everyone and share my online self-counseling sessions with the Interwebs, and a LOT has happened during that time. Shyt, a lot is STILL happening as I sit here on my couch with my dog at my feet and incense burning to cleanse the energy in my apartment. I’ll bullet point the highlights below, and then when we’re caught up I’ll resume my reunion tour:

• Ended things with a potential boo thang.
• Got laid off from a job I hated.
• Followed my passion for wine into the wonderful world of Wine Education via Wine and Spirits Education Trust.
• Waited tables at a wine bar and restaurant…poorly…she ain’t meant for service, y’all.
• Lost some weight…gained most back. Being a stress-eater suuuuucks. 😦
• Got offered a career opportunity so amazing and out of the box that I just KNEW it had to be a blessing from God! SIKE!!! Opportunity turned into a manifestation of the Devil on Earth with some key players (not I, said the fly…) being indicted on federal fraud charges. I’m in the clear, but holy shyt that was a stressful revelation to live through.
• Joined a mentoring organization to insert myself into circles of wealthy and positive individuals…refuse to do the work required to benefit from said organization.
• Lost some old friends to the passage of time because our seasons had definitely run their course.
• Still out here trying to figure out just what in theeeeee entire fcuk these last 16 months were supposed to teach me besides how close I can be pushed to my limit before I suffer a psychotic break and require a padded room and the strong tranquilizers to settle down.

Caught up? Fabulous!  Questions or comments? Save ’em…a bish it too tired. All I can do right now is figure out what is best for MYSELF at this moment, and it does not include entertaining other people’s opinions on just WTF I am doing or how I am processing all of the emotions I’ve been tasked with carrying these past many months. This is the entire purpose behind starting the blog – to get crap out of my head without having to write a check for a copay (can’t afford my actual shrink right now anyways), but I don’t have the energy to entertain people’s well-intentioned advice. I’ve literally spent the past year with this nagging sensation that I should be documenting what I’m going through to help myself and possibly help someone else, but I would always chicken out and internalize my struggles because when you put it all down and then read your life back to you, it forces you to re-live some pretty horrible moments that you tried to bury deep inside of yourself so you can keep pushing ahead. We are all going through various levels of BS and just trying to do the best we can, but I was ashamed and embarrassed and overwhelmed by everything I had going on.

There were so many moments in the past year where I just KNEW I was about to get a win – Lord knows I’ve earned one by now – but even my wins turned into even bigger losses, and I just wanted to crawl inside myself and die. Not literally die because I’m not suicidal, but I am tired. And as much as we want to put on a brave face and say how strong we are and that we can handle anything with prayer, or by drinking water, or by eating our veggies, there inevitably comes a point where you honestly don’t think you can do this shyt anymore. But since you aren’t suicidal you don’t even get the peace that comes from knowing that an ending to your pain and loneliness and exhaustion is on the horizon. There is no fucking horizon. There is no light. There is no hope. And who wants to put these thoughts on paper (so to speak) to be ridiculed or judged by other people telling you how it’s going to be ok and just keep moving forward or how God’s got this? Who wants that? And let me tell you something, I am a proud woman of Faith but my biggest daily struggle has been not to get angry with God. To keep trusting Him even when I don’t feel Him near, to be still and not feel guilty about the stillness because there is a difference between being still and doing nothing.

I feel like I am losing the ability to be happy for other people’s victories, and that is not my personality. I celebrate my friends when they accomplish new goals and victories because that’s what a non-shitty friend does. But I’m tapped out, y’all. My every waking thought is consumed with how to get out of a hole that is closing in on me with every passing day, and that leaves zero room for me to pull from my emotional well to celebrate pregnancies, weddings, promotions, new houses, new cars, etc. I just ain’t got it. And a lot of my friends didn’t know I was battling all of this because for so long I kept the worst of it confined to a small group of those people to whom I am the closest. They were, and still very much are, my backbone when I have no more strength to stand on my own. Other folks thought I was just being a bitch or something and to those folks I say to get over yourself. Seriously. If I have been acting out of character lately, a real friend would have checked in, not checked out. Cleaning out my friends list and reassigning other people to different roles in my life has probably been the only silver lining I can think of at this time. And that’s not to say that it’s anyone else’s responsibility but mine to police my emotions, but isn’t that what we have our nearest and dearest for in the first place? To check on you when you’re down? To support you sometimes just by sitting with you in silence while you cry silent tears of hopelessness, but at least you don’t have to cry alone? Would they not want the same from me if I noticed their mood changed or they because withdrawn? No? Just me? Meh.

This return to writing, my acknowledgment of the darkest of dark places I have walked through these past few months, is being done for purely selfish reasons. I. Am. Fucking. Tired. I feel like I am going to explode from the inside, and that I will be found in my own body puddle clutching a bottle of bourbon with one hand while my dog lays next to me chewing on my hair if I don’t get some of this out of my system. The anger. The rage. The pain. The hopelessness. The loneliness. The utter desperation that comes from legit not knowing what your life is going to look like in the next 30 days, and having that idea keep you up at night clutching a bottle of bourbon instead of making you hopeful for whatever new adventure is coming your way. I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past year and change, and some of it ain’t pretty. I’ve become more emotionally vulnerable and humble than I have ever been in my life, but I hate the feeling of neediness that is associated with this new evolved version of myself. I hate needing help. And I gotta tell ya…I need help. Lots of help. But I am used to helping others and then helping myself. This is new. And I don’t like it.

I’ve got some work to do in the next few weeks, and as uncomfortable as these past few months have been I have a feeling that between now and October 1 it is about to get a lot worse. And I am afraid I won’t make it. I am afraid I will crumble and break and fall apart and be too defeated to keep fighting. But as much love and support as I get from my friends and family, I am all I really have and am the only one who can pull myself out of the darkness. I don’t have anyone who can take this burden off my shoulders and carry me while I rest and regroup. This is on me emotionally, even while I’ve been humbled to the point of accepting tangible help from outside individuals. I think it actually adds to my burden because I feel like I owe them for their generosity, and that added debt tacked on to my current situation feels like a weight is sitting on my chest.

How do you pull it together? How do you know that everything will be ok? What does ok even look like anymore? What do you do when you reach a crossroads and things haven’t worked themselves out? How the fcuk do you recover?

I know I’m not the only person going through some horrendous growing pains right now, so hopefully this post makes you feel less lonely. It won’t make you feel better to know that other people are suffering like you are right now…but maybe it will help with the deafening roar of failure that is draining whatever positivity you might have left to keep fighting.

And we must keep fighting. What other choice do we really even have? And it’s that revelation that makes me the most tired out of everything. And that says a lot about how tired I truly am.

Some of the people I have spoken with over the past few days have been very dismissive of the apparent avalanche of sexual assault/harassment stories that have come to the forefront in recent months, but I think it finally occurred to me why that is.

Women- you’re dismissive because if you think back far enough, you’ll probably realize there have been times in your life where you were on the receiving end of an unwanted assault. You might not have known it at the time, but something didn’t feel ok about whatever you were experiencing- a hug that lasted a little too long; an inappropriate joke from your creepy uncle or family friend; being felt up by a cute guy at a party that made you feel gross when society said it was supposed to be a compliment. Maybe even sexual partners who did not rape you but applied so much pressure in the moment that you felt guilty if you didn’t say yes. We’ve all heard the lies men tell when they want to get between your thighs – If I don’t cum I’ll get sick/blue balls; Why are you being a tease?; We don’t have to do anything, just lay here naked with me. And we do because we’ve been conditioned to think that if we end up in these scenarios then it’s our fault for whatever might happen. We asked for it. Men can not control themselves. Boys will be boys. You look back on your own experiences, and now you might be feeling the dread of knowing that even if you had spoken up or out that it would have been *your* reputation that was ruined. Your family that would have turned on you. You start to remember all the times when something didn’t feel right or when something was done to you and for the first time you might feel like a victim. You might feel guilty for not reporting it. Guilty for giving permissions to men for their bad behavior for your entire life and not saying or doing anything about it. You might have some compassion for the women who are speaking out now, or you might feel resentment because you know you’ll never publicly name or shame the person who took little pieces of yourself from you that you’ll never get back. So you dismiss the accusers because you think they need to either get over themselves, get over the trauma, or you’re jealous that their voices will be heard on a level yours never will.

Men- some of you are dismissing these claims because if you think back you might have actually been “that guy” to someone in your past. Maybe you got too handsy at a party? Maybe you remember a time at the movies when you slipped your date’s hand down your pants and held it there while she tried pulling it back without making noise in the theater to draw attention to the issue. Or maybe you remember when you and a group of your guys took turns having sex with a girl at a party while she and everyone else was drunk and watching because that’s just what raucous young men do. It wasn’t rape if you were having sex with someone and you and your friend switched out from behind and the girl didn’t consent to a different partner. It wasn’t an assault when you grabbed the girls breasts or slapped her ass when walking past you and your group of friends while waiting for the bell to ring for next period. It was just a joke when you locked yourself in a room with a girl and pressured her into a sex act while she performed it with tears running down her face at a party. And it was hilarious when at school the next day you told everyone she was a slut and her reputation was ruined for high school and sullied for college. None of these behaviors from your past count as assaults to you because it was just fun and games. Kids being kids. Boys being boys. You hadn’t even thought about it in 10, 20, 30 years and it certainly doesn’t make you a monster. It doesn’t make you *like the men you hear about and see on TV.*

Parents – while going through all of the above feelings about your own pasts and the actions endured and performed, you realize you’re perpetuating the cycle with your own kids. You teach girls how not to get raped, but don’t teach your sons not to rape in the first place. You tell a girl that she was asking for *it* based on how she was dressed, and you dismiss the sexually deviant acts of young boys and men as “boys being boys.” It’s normal. It’s how it always has been. That’s why raising boys is deemed “easier” than girls. That’s why girls get the lectures and the curfews and the daddies threatening their dates with shot guns. Dads know how these boys are being brought up, so while they’re thinking of all the things that the date could do to his daughter that would drive him to murder, the conversations he’s having with his son before a date don’t have anything to do with respecting a girl’s space or her body. He’s beaming with pride at the idea of his son scoring and slipping him a condom so he doesn’t get the little “slut” knocked up. Y’all are upset because you’ve realized that you’re raising the next generation of predators under your own roof, but you are also too afraid to take a different stance because of how sexual deviancy has been normalized. You’ve probably also realized that some of the behaviors from friends and family are inappropriate towards your kids, and now you feel guilty for bringing them around but you know they “didn’t meant anything” and “that’s just how they are.” Uncle Jimmy has always been a little handsy. Your friend from work was checking out your daughter, but she shouldn’t be wearing those shorts around the house anyway. You make your daughter dress in layers when she leaves the house to make her as invisible as possible to members of the opposite sex because you “know how men are.”

None of this is normal. None of this is ok. Not all victims will tell our stories out of shame or fear or embarrassment. Men won’t own up to their behaviors because they don’t view themselves the same as the men being dragged through the media. If the assault wasn’t violent then there wasn’t ever really an assault, right? If it was as bad as the girl says, she would have spoken out earlier. Can’t she take a joke? You know how boys can be with their hormones. She was dressed like a whore in the first place, what did she think was going to happen?

That’s why y’all are so upset. And that’s why this cycle won’t end.