Dicks

Bad behavior

I encounter questionable behavior on a pretty regular basis.  I’m pretty sure we all do.  And every time I have one of these interactions, I think about how I should write about it make some poignant social statement about being good to each other and catching more flies with honey, than with vinegar and never underestimating that power of unexpected kindness, and all sorts of other bullshit…I always think that I’m going to turn those situations into a moment of clarity where we all hug and cry and dance and appreciate each other for our diversity and our imperfections.  But then days like today happen.  On days like today, I don’t want to dance or hug or laugh.  Because poor behavior isn’t laugh-worthy.  It shouldn’t’ be celebrated.  Poor behavior only demonstrates poor character, poor decision making, and poor upbringing.
 

Here are a few of the most common displays of poor behavior…

Liars

No let’s be clear.  We all lie.  EVERYBODY lies.  It’s human nature.  I lie all the time to my kid when he asks me what happened to our cat, Banana.  Banana got hit by a car.  But I didn’t think that my four year old needed the image of his cat lying in the middle of the road, bloody and gruesome, to mull over in his mind.  So, I told him that Banana ran away.  I lie to my mom, on days like today, when she calls and asks how I’m doing.  I say “fantastic!”  Because she is sick and she doesn’t need to hear my bullshit, when she can barely walk.  I lie to patients all the time when they ask “Do you think I’m dying?”  I always tell them, somberly, “more than likely…yes.”  I guess that’s not really a lie.  Even though they may not be dying from shin splints or an upper respiratory infection, everybody’s dying.  Point is, we all lie, from time to time.  It’s  a survival mechanism.  HOWEVER.  When you lie to someone, intentionally, to further your own agenda, and you think they don’t know you are lying to them, essentially, you’re  saying “I think you are stupid.  And I’m going to benefit from your stupidity.”  I recently had a conversation with a friend, who also happens to be a colleague, about a person he is responsible for.  And I said “Uh….This girl is malingering.”  And my friend got real obstinate and said “You can’t say that, Ang.  That’s like calling somebody a liar.”  WHHHATTTT????  Somebody lie?  To you????  NO!!!!!!  But my only response was “Listen.  People lie to me every day.  I know what it looks like.”  Guess what.  Two weeks later that same guy called me and said “We gotta take care of this.  This girl isn’t being honest.”  WHHHHAAAAATTTTT????? 

The backdoor friend

I talk a lot about getting back-doored.  For those who don’t understand the term, you haven’t ever been back-doored.  And no, this isn’t a sexual innuendo.  It is a very literal term for people who don’t get what they want when they want it, so they look to other avenues to get their “needs” met.  Usually, that avenue leads to a door that was, accidently, left unlocked.  This term applies when people try to get the keys to the playboy mansion, but can’t pay the rent.  So, they run to all the other doors, until they find one that some crazy blond left unlocked.  Then, once they get in, and you catch them there, unauthorized, they act like you were the one who gave them the keys.  These people are determined to get what they want, regardless of the means.  These are the people who are never held accountable.  These are the people who get everything they want because they are resourceful enough to find a way to get it.  You want to hate them, but the only reason you can find is that you will never be so manipulative as to get everything you want.  They’re like politicians, you want to hate them for being so deceptive, but you admire them for being so resourceful.  Even if they only get what they want at the expense of others. 

And finally…Dicks.

We’ve all been a dick before.  For most people, you only have to be a dick when you are protecting something that you cherish.  Radley’s teacher thinks I’m a dick because I don’t let her get away with humiliating my child.  That’s my job.  The principal at his school thinks I’m a dick because I won’t let him patronize me.  On more than one occasion I have had to tell a colleague “I’m not trying to be a dick, but get your shit together”  (Please reference paragraph two.)  Most people are only dicks when they are real pissed.  When they have been pushed to their limits.  But today, I got a call at work from a man who asked me to do something completely unrelated to my job.  I did it, but I also told him how to use the proper channels to get what he needed.  Then, real indignant, I got an IM from this guy, who, by the way, is a giant douche.   It said “what’s with the attitude?”  This is how I responded:  “I’m busy.  I don’t work for you.  You are largely insignificant to me.  You are not a patient. You have only been a dick to me.   I only tolerate you because we work at the same place.”  Translation:  You are a fucking dick and don’t treat me like I’m your fucking secretary. His only response was “remember that the next time you call down here.”  Like it was a threat.  What.  The.  Fuck???  You vacuum cars for a living.  I have no reason to talk to you.  Am I pissed about this?  Clearly.  But he’s not the only dick I have to deal with.  He’s not the only dick the people I work with have to deal with.  We have to deal with self entitled dicks every day.  We’re all pretty good at it.  ALL OF US. 

Be advised

Please let this be the reminder:  My soul is already black because of the hate and the abuse I have to deal with everyday.  I can deal with you, too.  But if you act like a dick and hurt any of the people I love, any of them, I will annihilate you.  I may let you lie to me.  I may let you abuse me.  I may let you manipulate me.  I may ignore it when you intentionally disrespect me.  But do not, DO NOT, let me catch you doing that to my son, my friends, my colleagues, my people.  If I find you doing it, I will destroy you.  Because my people are good. My people are honest.  They never put themselves first.  They don’t only deserve respect, but they deserve headlines for their compassion and conscientiousness.  So, please, I beg you, don’t abuse or misuse them.  Don’t be a dick to them.  They deserve better. 

1999

Remember that? 

Where were you in 1999?  What were you doing?  Can you remember 14 years ago?  Some days, 1999 feels like a lifetime ago, sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. Sometimes, when I think about 1999, it seems those are the most vivid memories of the last decade and a half.  Sometimes, the memories of that year seem as hazy as the rolling hills of West Sonoma County on a Spring morning.  Now that I think about it, 1999 was actually several lifetimes ago.  It is also much closer than I care to remember.   As everyone knows, I’m real introspective.  I think a lot about the past.  I think a lot about what got me here.  I think a lot about where I’m going.  I.  Think.  A lot.  I don’t necessarily think a lot about 1999, but when I do, I think about it as the beginning. 

A simpler time

In 1999, I couldn’t imagine life ever being harder than it was when I was in the middle of it.  I was 19.  I don’t know if you know this, but it’s real hard to be 19.  Unless you aren’t 19.  Then, you remember 19 as the easiest time of your life.  When, you are 19, though,  that’s the hardest it will ever get.  I was convinced of that.  I was in my second year in the Coast Guard.  I couldn’t see any farther than the time liberty was granted and the time liberty expired.  Everything that happened in between those two events only caused pain and heartache.  At work, I felt scrutinized and insignificant.  After work, I felt lonely and indignant.  I shopped a lot.  That helped.  At least I thought it did.  Until I got the bill.  I made some friends and I did things with them.  That helped.  Until I realized that I didn’t really like people.  I had sex with the guy at the grocery store I shopped at in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.  That helped.  Until it didn’t help anymore.  So, when the orders came for school, I hopped the first redeye from Seattle to Dulles, then a morning flight from Dulles to Norfolk.  And as soon as that plane was wheels up off the Seattle runway, I looked out the window, bid farewell to the Puget Sound, and swore that everything that had happened there would ever happen to me again. 

The beginning

That was the beginning.  That late night on a United flight, as I watched the runway lights blur into a blue line, and I watched the Washington State Ferries unload their final fares, from ten thousand feet above the black, glassy surface of the sound.  That was the beginning.  At the time, I saw it as an ending.  It was supposed to be the end of the hurt.  It was supposed to be the end of debilitating vulnerability.  It was supposed to be the end of glaring weakness.

When I arrived in Yorktown on a hideously hot and humid June afternoon, I met several people.  I don’t remember all of them now.  But there were a lot of people. It was a training center (another beginning, who knew?)  I didn’t really want to be friends with any of them.  Be reminded, I don’t really like people.  It’s a social anxiety thing.  It’s easier not to like people, that way they don’t hurt you.  But there were all of these people.  And I remember sitting in a phone booth in barracks (yes, I said phone booth.  1999, remember?), and I called my mom and told her I didn’t want to be there.  That I didn’t want to do the Coast Guard thing anymore.  That I just wanted to come home.  Obviously, I couldn’t go home.  So, I went to my room, cried myself to sleep, and formed up in the morning. 

Who knew?

I could have never known on that heavy, Mid-Atlantic afternoon that it was the beginning.  I could have never known that the people I met that day would still be with me 14 years later.  I could have never understood the importance good people have on your being.  But here I am, a decade and a half later, talking about those same people, those experiences that we shared together.  We still share fire alarms and dark nights.  We still soul searching at coffee shops and ghost hunting in a black civic.  We still share fireworks at the pier on July Fourth and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.  We still share 1999. 

But really.  Who knew?  Who knew then, that we would ever share more than 1999?  Who knew that when we left Yorktown in the fall of that year, that 14 years later we would still be sharing our lives.  Who knew that over the years we would share divorces and deaths and births and achievements?  Babies.  Weddings.  Losses.  Victories.  Life.  Love.  We never saw that coming back then. 

Two days ago, one of these amazing people became a father for the first time.  In Kodiak.  Where, nearly six years go, my own child was born., within two days of one of these other people.    A town where I was reunited with one of these people, six years b before that.   Even though it may seem so, Kodiak is not our connection.  We’ve been all over the place.  I remember , a few nights in Alameda, playing Uno and drinking daiquiris with all of those same people, at the same time.  It’s not Alameda, either, though.  It’s coffee in Norfolk.  It’s lunch in Seattle.  It’s wine on the Sonoma Coast.  Location isn’t our connection.  We are the connection.  The human connection. 

The years pass, we do different things.  We all move forward, but we never move past our friendship.  So, who knew?  Who knew that 1999 would be the year that united us for the rest of our lives?  Who knew that wherever we ended up, we would always be together? 

Harvest Moon - A short

I was born on March 20^th .  A Pisces, on the cusp of Aries, ascending in Capricorn.  To the cosmically conscious, that means that I am sensitive and aware, albeit, hysterical at times.  To the rest of the human population, that means that I’m batshit crazy.  People always look at me like they just saw an alien when I talk about the moon and the stars and the planets in retrograde.  And that’s fine.  I’d rather be that kind of crazy than the kind of crazy that keeps human remains in the freezer.  Right?  

I talk a lot about the universe.  And I talk a lot about our cosmic connection.  I talk a lot about emotion.  Because I’m a Pisces.  A water sign.  We are very emotional people.  We are perceptive and intuitive and we will solve all of your problems.  And if we can’t solve your problems, we will hold you close until your life is better.  That’s what we do.  And because I believe in those qualities the universe has bestowed on me, people often think I’m crazy.  Not just a little crazy.  A lot of crazy.  BATSHIT CRAZY. 

So, by now, you  are probably thinking I am WAY crazier than you thought I was before. THISBITCHISFUCKINGCRAZY.  That’s most likely what you are thinking.  And I probably am.  But just do me a favor.  Walk outside tonight.  Look at the night sky.  Watch the harvest moon rise.  As you stand there in silence, let me know what you think.  Do you think that we are alone?  Do you think that moon was meant only for us?  If you think those things, please stop reading.  NOW. But  if you walk outside and hear the silence, under a moonlit sky, and hear everything more clearly, maybe I’m not as crazy as you think I am.  Because if you look up at tonight’s sky, or any night’s sky, you should feel small.  You should feel vulnerable.  You should feel the stillness that gives you a greater appreciation for your existence.  Under the reflection of the moon, you should be humbled by the beauty around you.  You should feel should feel the absence of what you don’t have.  You should feel fulfilled by what you do.  That is the power of the universe.  Gratitude.  Desire.  Humility.  Life is about balance.  If you don’t feel any of those things when you look at the sky tonight, you may want to reevaluate your inner peas.  

The Scale

Why don’t you date? 

Recently, somebody asked me this.  Somebody actually asked me “why don’t you date?”  The stock answer:  I can’t have men coming and going in my son’s life.  Also, it’s a lot of work (Please refer to http://apsinnerpeas.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-perfect-first-date.html) The real answer:  IT’S FUCKING HORRIFYING.  Even when you set aside the fact that you have to put up a facade of bullshit and hide ALL of the crazy, dating is super scary.  Not so much because you have to worry about all the normal dating stuff like toes and eyebrows and balancing the humor and the compassion and give the appearance of emotional stability, but mostly because once you do all of those things, you are usually doing it for some douche bag who wasn’t worth a fraction of the time you put into it in first place.  That’s why I don’t date.  Because it’s hard.  And unfulfilling.  And I have a vibrator.  So, I’m good. 

The man spectrum

Before I go any further, I need to explain the scale.  I fabricated this diagram today to illustrate to my married friends what it’s like to be single in your 30s.  It is not, NOT, Sex in the City.  Even though I like to joke about good shoes and drinking wine, those things are largely meaningless.  And the men are NEVER Mr. Big.  So, I drew this scale as a visual aide to help those who are jaded by long term relationships to better understand the reality of being a single, or in my case, divorced, woman in her 30s.  You can see that the diagram is bookended by two different, but equally disturbing, male personality types.   On the far left, you have the creeper.  On the far right, you have the emotional retard.  At the fulcrum of the scale, you have the balanced, desirable men:  Gays and Marrieds.  Like any scale you, seek balance and integrity.  In this case, the balanced are already unattainable.  So, for the purpose of this conversation, we will focus on the two extremes:  creepers and emotional retards. 

The Emotionally Challenged (please read: RETARDED)

I’m starting here, in no particular order, because this is the subject I am most familiar with.  Also, as an aside, even though these individuals are categorized as undesirable, make no mistake, they are ridiculously desirable to single women.  I don’t know why.  I can see a bad decision coming from ONE THOUSAND miles away.  The emotionally challenged actually wear signs.  You don’t have to wait for them to talk or reveal their hideous past indiscretions.  Women can actually spot emotional retards by the black cloud that hovers over them and the insatiable desire to have their babies.   These special brands of emotional deviants come in many forms.  The sociopath.  The troubled loner.  The Love scorned.  I’ve seen them all.  I know the signs.  And my response to them, on every encounter, is always the same:  “hehehe.  He’s so cute.  This is fixable.  What happened to my panties?”  Seriously, I once sat with a friend I have known and loved for many years and listened to him tell me how he is immune to emotional attachment.  I had sex with him two hours later.  I once had dinner with man who, uninhibitedly, told me all about his anger and abandonment issues and I had sex with him in the truck outside the restaurant.  If a man exhibits any signs of being emotionally unavailable, I’m there.  Because just like I can pick them out of a lineup, they can spot me too.  In the words of my dear friend Marshall Mathers, my attraction to the emotionally retarded, and theirs to me can only be described as “what happens when a tornado meets a volcano.”  Total destruction.  Hehehe.  He’s so cute , though.  And so dangerous. 

The Socially Challenged (please read:  RESTRAINING ORDER)

Now enter a completely different kind of man.  The kind of man who can’t give you enough compliments.  The kind of man who likes your shoes and your laugh and your cat.  Mind you, he hasn’t ever met your cat, but he likes it anyway.  He likes everything about you.  The only problem is, you don’t know him.  So, it’s a little creepy.  Creepers have happened a few times.  Nothing really notable, but very uncomfortable.  Because nice girls like bad boys, but don’t’ want to hurt anybody’s feelings.  So, you kind of sit and wait for it to go away.  But while it’s going away, it makes for very awkward interactions.  Like my up the street neighbor, who knocked on the door every third day to give me an update on the neighborhood, and tell me he had wine.  There are ten houses on this street.  And, clearly, I have my own wine.  It happened so frequently, that I was devastated at the thought of having to move after I had fallen in love with Holly Heights.  There was also that guy who I knew from work, who showed up at my front door on his bicycle when I was making dinner.  How did he even know where I live?  I don’t advertise that shit.  But there he was.  In spandex.  On my front porch.   Then, there was the kid who told “you look good today. “ That’s nice.  Only we don’t know each other.  Compliments are well received with women.  We are all, as the phrase indicates, attention whores.  We all want to be acknowledged.  What we don’t want is to be accosted.  It’s real flattering, until it’s not.  As my friend Pedro said, “Either this guy is the man of your dreams who will treat you like a queen, or you’re going to become a lampshade.”  Flattering. 

That’s why

Seriously.  That’s what it’s like out there.  There’s a reason men are single. Hell, for that matter, there’s a reason women are single.  Either you commit to loving dysfunction, or you show up as a victim on local news.  So, yes, thank you.  I will protect my own emotional and physical well being by NOT dating.  It’s scary out there.  And I already have a vibrator, therefore orgasms.   That’s half the battle.  I also have people who won’t just help me bury a body, they would drag it to a shallow grave for the price of a snapper sandwich. They would even absorb the cost of the sandwich, just to see me happy.  That’s love and commitment, the other half of the battle.  Even more, that’s inner peas. 

Life on Life's Terms

My mom always told me that death was just a part of living.  My dad has never been afraid to die.   Yet more proof that  I’m the product of two hippie parents.  Accepting that being born and being dead are the only two definite promises life makes to you.  Everything else is real up in the air.  You may believe in destiny.  You may believe in creating your own destiny.  You may believe that you have to take what you are given and do the most that you can with it.  I always like to think that the latter is how I live my life.  Between us , though, that’s probably not so true.  That’s really neither here nor there, however.  Point being, my hippie parents were probably right.  We will never know how long we will live and we don’t know when we are going to die.  But, living and dying are the only constants.  That’s living life on life’s terms. 

I remember very vividly a phone call, after midnight, on my mom’s 43^rd birthday.  I picked up the telephone and heard my girlfriend, Katie, sobbing into the telephone “Sarah is dead.”  She must have repeated that phrase six or seven times before I realized what she was saying.  And the as haze of sleep and the intensity of panic melded together, I saw the blurred image of Sarah painting.  Sarah was an artist.  She was so talented and beautiful and crazy and fun.  She was one of my best friends.  And then she was dead.  Without reason.  At 17.  I don’t remember the rest of the conversation with Katie, but I remember getting out of my bed and going into my mom’s room.  I sat on the floor next to her bed and whispered “Sarah died.”  She was sound asleep and I was certain she didn’t hear me.  And I remembered it was my mom’s  birthday, so I probably shouldn’t wake her up anyway.  As I stood to leave, she reached for me.  She said “I know.  I just didn’t know how to tell you.”  She was crying.  I rarely ever saw my mom cry.  But she was crying.  And so was I.  As she held me and I asked her  “Why, mommy?”  She said “We can ask why all we want.  But its a God thing and we will never understand why.  That’s not our job.”  That was my first real encounter with death. 

After Sarah was so senselessly taken from us, death snowballed in my life.  Later that same year, we lost another classmate.  For driving like an asshole on a country road.  My first day at a Coast Guard unit, I watched a human body disintegrate after a med-evac gone wrong.  Later that year, on Christmas night, we pulled a lifeless foreign exchange student out of the water while John Lennon played on AM radio.  Two years later, I saw a friend’s face on a memorial poster, after the boat he was driving capsized in frigid waters In Western New York.  That friend was a man whose children I had watched and played with.  That was a man who rubbed my back when I was vomiting, while cleaning brain matter out of the non-skid surface of a boat, my first day on the job.  Then, not long before my 25^th birthday, there was a dauntless four-hour race to get one of my best friends from Fairfax, VA to her dying mother in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.  We didn’t make it in time.  A night of wine and laughs and tears and laughs afterword, I drove home to another loss. 

As, the years passed, I worried that I will become complacent to death.  That I won’t concern myself with it.  I worry that I will forget how once I quit a good job in private practice medicine.  Where I saw many people die.  A father with a beautiful wife and three young children.  A baby, who died of SIDS while his mother drank the pain away.  A lonely veteran who died in a filthy room at the Salvation Army, without a soul to mourn his loss.  A very young man, who had been bedridden for his entire adult life.  I worry that I will forget those things.  Because when you see too much death, you become callous.  It’s a survival mechanism. 

But I don’t ever want to forget what loss feels like.  I don’t ever want to forget the girl who turned the wrong way on a one-way street.  I don’t ever want to forget the six aircrews who were lost  in the last decade.  I don’t want to forget the man who took his own life over empanadas.  I don’t want to forget the man chasing drug smugglers in that dark Southern California night.  I don’t want to forget the two friends who were MURDERED at the hands of colleague. I don’t want to forget my neighbor Kurt, who was epileptic, and had a seizure in his sleep and BOOM…Dead.   I don’t want to forget that kid who drew me an awesome picture of robots and aliens on a record transfer form,  then shot himself two weeks after he got to he left Petaluma.  I don’t want to forget the round face and jovial smile, that I learned in my boss’s office this morning, I’ll never see again.  I don’t want to forget any of that. 

We have no control over when we come or when we go.  But we do have control over what we leave.  Every time we suffer a loss in our community, I call my mom.  And  every time, I still ask “mommy why?”  And every time she says the same thing.  “That’s not for us to know, Angie”  She also says “it isn’t the dead who suffer, it’s those who are left behind who grieve.”  I wish those words were as comforting now as they were the first time I heard them.  But she’s right, though.  I guess we just have to accept what is and move forward.  But when we lose one of our own, we should always take a moment to remember what they meant to us.  We should always remember what they did for our community.  We should always take a moment to grieve for our loss.  

12 Years

Where were you? 

We all have a story from that day.  We all remember exactly where we were when we heard about the inconceivable attacks on our country’s most iconic symbols of freedom and prosperity.  We all felt gut wrenching sorrow and the inescapable vulnerability of an unimaginable magnitude.  Where were you?  What was your day like? 

On September 11, 2001, I was walking to work at 6:30.  I walked into the office, and my colleague, Greg, was standing in front of the TV.  Now, be reminded, it was 2001, not 2013, we had a TV in the office, but we didn’t turn it on.  But there was Greg, standing with the remote in his hand, adjusting to volume on an “old fashioned” tube screen.  It was barely twilight in Alameda, but the live images on the television showed a very blue New York sky.  A blue sky that began to appear grey and smoky.  I looked at Greg and said “why’s the TV on?”  He said “Shhh…A plane just hit the world trade center.”  The first thing I thought was “Wow.  That’s a pretty bad navigational error.”  Because what the fuck else do you think when a plane hits a building? Shame on them for building three gimongus airports within ten miles of the city with the tallest skyline in the world.  That’s what I thought.  It’s probably what you thought, too.  But as the minutes passed, and other details emerged, it became very clear what had happened.  Still, we couldn’t wrap our minds around it.  At least I couldn’t.  I remember Greg saying, this country was attacked.  I remember other people saying it.  But I don’t remember any voices from the news broadcasts.  I just remember thinking “this is all an accident.”  Finally, all the talk about attacks and terrorism got the best of me.  As I walked home at lunch, I started to get scared.  I started to wonder if it really was intentional.  I know it’s naïve, but I was 21. 

I walked in the house and the phone was ringing.  That’s when not everyone had a cell phone, but everyone still had a home phone.  I went to pick up the phone and saw the answering machine blinking with the number “12”.  I picked up the ringing phone and heard my sister-in-law sobbing.  “Are you OK?  Is Michael OK?  Are you guys going to go to war?”   I had no idea what to say.  Uh.  Yeah.  We live in California.  And we are in the Coast Guard.  We aren’t going to war, lady.  I talked to her for an hour.   And by the time we got off the phone, I was terrified.  WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?  I walked back to work.  No work was done.  I went home and called my mom.  I was so torn up by then, when she answered the phone, all I could say is “why do they hate us, mommy?”  She grew up in Lebanon and , still, didn’t have a  good answer. 

What did you do?

Well, after we all figured out it wasn’t bullshit, we did a lot of things.  We got sad.  We grieved.  We got angry.  We accepted.  And we moved forward.  Together.  We were unified.  There were so many movements.  We embraced our public servants.  We supported our military.  We became communal.  We bought bumper stickers.  And t-shirts.  Everything we did supported the cause.  We were all New Yorkers.  We were never going to forget.  We all said “Let’s roll.” Hollywood made movies and TV shows.  Nashville and Detroit produced songs.  September 11^th was a team building exercise.  And we all bought into the team.  But while we were busy strengthening our team in the aftermath of disaster, as a result of tragedy, we forgot our purpose.  The purpose of our unity. 

Never forget

After September 11^th, 2001, we were committed to each other.  We were committed to saving ourselves from our selves.  We were committed to being stronger and better and more solidified.  It has only been twelve years.  Twelve.  But we have already forgotten.  We have already forgotten the 2996 men and women who lost their lives that day. You know how I know, when I Googled the number of casualties from the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, I typed in “casualties in the US” and the first three hits were “civil war”, “Afghanistan”, and “Syria.”  9/11 was actually the ninth on the list.  So.  All of that rallying we did, all of that committing to the greater good, all of that improving ourselves is only ninth.  All of the committing to each other didn’t mean shit.  And it shows.  Because we are more divided now than we have ever been.  We can’t agree on how much to pay our teachers and firefighters, but we still vote ignorant assholes , who are quick to give themselves raises, into office.  We can’t seem to figure out how to take care of our neighbors, but we freely allow our government to take care of negligent bankers and war criminals.  Tomorrow is the 12^th anniversary of the day we came together, to protect and defend each other.  But what have we done to fulfill that promise to each other?  Never forget. 

-Inner Peas

Bad Ass

Girlfriends

I talk a lot about my girlfriends.  About how they get me through the day.  How they get me through the hard times.  How they are always there to celebrate victories.  I always talk about them.  As I try to find my voice and my path, I realize that my girlfriends are a predominant theme in my inner peas.   I talk about them because my girlfriends have saved my life.  Repeatedly.  But I just realized that I only talk about why I NEED them in my life.  I never really talk about why I WANT them in my life.  I should probably mention that.  It’s a pretty big deal.  They do so much for me and I tend to only thank them when they save my sorry ass from some crisis or mishap.  They deserve better than that.  They need to know why they are so fucking amazing. 

thisbitchisfuckincrazy - A history of female friendship

The past couple of generations have proved that it’s really hard to be a woman with a voice.  Maybe even harder than our mothers and grandmothers had it when they were in the thick of fighting for gender equality.  At least our predecessors had the benefit of a female alliance.  When the suffragettes were fighting for a woman’s right to vote, they had a common ground.  Later, when women fought for equality in the workplace, and equal wages to men, there was a connection.  However, after the work of those women was extinguished, they left the following generations how to figure out how to deal with more dichotomous issues.  Issues like getting along with each other.  Issues like putting petty differences aside.  Issues like the insecurity that comes with trying to be independently successful while comparing yours to the successes of others.  It’s that comparison that created a culture of women who were nasty and hateful and spineless and ugly.  Essentially, it was the work of our mothers’ generation that made us feel the need to make life a competition.  Once the allegiance to the cause dissipated, we were left with a need to prove ourselves against our sisters.  And that’s where it started. 

As little girls, we were taught to be smarter, prettier, more athletic, have a better boyfriend.  That’s what women’s rights did to us.  It only made us more inclined to look at other women and berate them for not being as successful as we are.  Or, conversely, it made us look at other women and pine for what they had and we did not.  And women tend to be real hateful when they feel insecure.  They also tend to band together.  They will call names.  They will make judgments.  But, make no mistake, there is no unity.  The first woman who walks a different path, or speaks her own mind, will be the next to suffer the wrath of the sisterhood. 

That’s how we grew up.  Calling each other names.  Talking shit.  Back-dooring each other, in an effort to make ourselves look better.  If it could give us the upper hand with a friendship, or a job or a relationship, we would throw our girlfriends to the wolves.  We’d say “That bitch is fucking crazy.” 

badassbitches

So for a very long time, I sheltered myself from the friendship of other women.  I opted to go it alone, so that I didn’t have to fear the wrath of upsetting the community, and having to suffer their punishment for not conforming.  I viewed other women as the enemy.  For a very long time, I lived like that.  Then, one day, I realized that they weren’t the enemy.   I realized that we were finally growing up. We are finally using each other for what we should be.  We are using each other for support.  We are using each other for relief.  We are using each other for inspiration.  And that’s why I WANT my girlfriends in my life.  I want them because they are honest.  I want them because they are fighters.  I want them because they are smart and funny and pretty.  I want them because they aren’t perfect, to themselves, but they are perfect to me.  I want them because they put up the most amazing fight to improve what they have.  I want these women in my life because they are survivors.  They have survived childbirth.  They have survived parenting.  They have survived the desire for those things, yet being robbed of them.  They have survived loss.  They have survived defeat.  They have survived bullies.  They have survived abuse.  They have survived judgment.  But they have embraced their survival, not only as success, but also as a contribution to the greater good.  They have survived on their own, but they never had to do it alone for one second.  That’s why I want these incredible women in my life. 

It’s cliché, but I would be nothing without these women.  NOTHING.  Yes, I could do it all by myself.  Yes, they could do it all by themselves.  But we are so much better together.  Of course, I need them.  I flatter myself and think that they need me too.  But what’s most important is that I WANT them in my life.   It’s purely selfish.  But I want them in my life because they are proof that there are no weak links, but rather that every link serves as a different purpose.   No chain could function if there was only one link.  Together we are all strong.  Together we are all pretty bad ass. 

-Inner Peas

Culture

Helplessness

That’s what I call it.  The culture of helplessness.   This culture is based on the idea that we expect others to take care of all of our responsibilities for us, or at least we expect others to accommodate our needs immediately.   We have the idea that any level of discomfort be it emotional, physical, or financial should be addressed immediately.  We think that discomfort is an emergency.  (Please be reminded that that an emergency is defined as a threat to life, limb or property.   Moderate discomfort isn’t mentioned anywhere in that definition.)  Anyway,  I often notice that because people tend to mistake kindness for obligation, they expect more.  They feel more entitled.  They become helpless. 

Expectations

Now, don’t misunderstand, I believe in the power of a network.  We all need networks to survive.  Emotional networks.  Professional networks.  Communal networks.  We are social creatures; it’s much easier to navigate life’s tsunami when you don’t have to go it alone.  But you can’t abuse your network.  You need to be able to contribute something to the progress.  You can’t expect other’s to carry all of your weight.  All of your burdens.  It’s unfair.  But it’s also helpless. 

When you expect other’s to take care of you, all the time, you are essentially saying that you are more important than everyone else.  When you expect your networks to fix what you have broken, you are telling them that they should make you a priority.  We do it a lot in this culture.  We tell teachers to make our children smart and well behaved, instead of teaching them ourselves.  We tell our doctors to make us healthy, despite our unhealthy lifestyle choices.  We tell our banks that it’s their fault our homes were foreclosed on when we didn’t do enough to protect our own financial stability.  We tell our loved ones that it’s not our out own fault when we feel bad, and it’s their responsibility to make us feel better.  These are the expectations.  We expect others to fix EVERYTHING for us.  But when we do that, we lose sight of our values.  Important values like respect, self-reliance, gratitude and appreciation. 

Appreciation

TRUTH:  The people you do the most to try to help will be the quickest to shit on you for not helping enough.  It’s just a fact.  It’s inevitable.  Maybe it’s because you have more interaction with those people, so they feel comfortable.  Maybe it’s because you when you show kindness to people, they misinterpret  it for vulnerability or weakness.  Maybe it’s just because people are assholes.  I don’t know the reasons.  I haven’t read the studies.  But I do know that when take the time to help people, they tend to mistake you for their personal assistant.  I found myself marginally guilty of this behavior today.  After I had spent six hours trying to remedy a really bad situation, for a man I barely know, I had nowhere else to turn, but to my network.  I called my colleague, my friend, while he was at lunch and I screamed into the phone “HELP ME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Just like that.  Like that guy should stop everything he was doing to help me help someone else.  I mean really.  This guy works 15 hours a day.  Maybe I could have waited another 15 minutes until he finished his lunch.  But I didn’t.  HELP.  ME. NOW.  That’s what I said.  And he did.  I don’t know why.  Because I was only perpetuating the culture of helplessness.  And I realized it immediately.  So, I texted him and said.  “Thank you.  I appreciate you.”  And his response made me think. 

LOL

“LOL”  That was his response.  Like gratitude is funny.  Like it’s hard to believe that somebody appreciates your time and your sacrifice.  LOL.  That’s when I realized the real problem with the culture of helplessness.  It’s not just that we are teaching our children that they don’t need to take care of themselves, it’s that we are teaching the people who do take care of them to do it without recognition.  And we are teaching that entitlement is an important benefit, but the burden it  places on others isn’t important.  We are teaching ineptitude and ignorance and irresponsibility.   LOL.  Right? 

-Inner Peas