Walking in my truth by 2020 is the goal….feeling good about my socially overcompensating empathy, my body image and self worth.

And, it’s not that I don’t feel good right now. I do. No really. But to understand why I feel okay now and still have a goal to feel EVEN better by next year, you may need to get caught up just a bit on my miserable history. You got to see the DARK to see the LIGHT.

Don’t worry, I’ll make it brief – I’ll bullet point my burdens, a little major heartache I’ve endured, and a focused feature of the more recent ‘fuckening’ of my life. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned and how I use it now to feel good, and I’ll try to do this without too much rambling and ranting, getting ‘re-pissed’ about it all.

Why even go there?

This whole ‘share my woes’ version of storytelling is the only way for you to truly understand why my goal is to feel even better and why I’m notable okay now. I’m NOT getting trapped in my pain. No one wants to put up with, be friends with or BUY DRINKS FOR a problem-puking bastard who can’t shut up about their shit life or the shit OF life.

But, the journey must include pain if you want to even notice that you feel good at all…so, obviously, for me to even have an ounce of what resembles a modicum of joy, you KNOW there MUST BE some dark and horrible soul-ripping shit living behind each evil smile.

Bullet point of burden number one:

I was a nerd. A REAL nerd. Not the HIPSTER APPROPRIATED kind you see around now. So, I was bullied…the old, REAL way – the way that stays stuck in a misery loop in your mind and heart …that just maybe – hypothetically - puts you in therapy and on Xanax for two decades just to be able to ‘adult’ responsibly. I once helped the school bully with her homework after seeing her cry in the car with her big brother punching her for her bad grades and how did she pay me back? The next day, she whispered to me not to say anything about what I saw her brother do and I said okay. But then later, not satisfied with my promise of keeping quiet, she caught me on the way home, had one of her gang cronies pin me down and cover my mouth while she dug her nails into both my arms until I bled and kicked me off of a moving streetcar. From this, I learned that A) empathy can hurt, and 2) people take keeping their secrets very seriously. I immediately started a new hobby of writing FICTION! Oh and this is also why I get fully enraged with hate seeing hipsters who were rich, good looking and popular, who had their stay-at-home-moms do their homework FOR THEM so they could attend every school dance and trip, walk around as adults with thick framed glasses they don’t even NEED and flood pants on purpose, sporting the “LOOK” of the ‘nerds they weren’t’. You know NOTHING about REAL nerd life, Cooper. Until you can prove you’ve bled due to bullying on the way home from school or had the homecoming court force feed you a lipstick, stop fronting, you poser! And another thing, Cameron…my mom didn’t DO my school projects FOR me. They looked fucked up because they were SUPPOSED TO…a KID did it! My mom was a teenage parent with 3 jobs. She couldn’t stay home. I’m a latch

Feeling Good 2020

October 11, 2019

key soldier, bitch. Dinner for me was frozen or a sandwich. I didn’t have TIME to be gluten free! MY NERD WAS REAL!

Ahem…where was I, ah yes…

Heartache highlight number two:

My husband left me after fifteen years of marriage, stating he just didn’t know HOW to live with ‘someone like me’ anymore and he’d found someone else that cared about how she looked, travelled the way he wanted to and was just more a ‘normal’ girl. THIS was the ONLY time in my forty-two years of life that I have EVER been dumped! Yeah. True story. And I get around! . That’s right after:

having a kid unexpectedly, because I only have HALF my working parts,

sharing experiences with him he claimed he was just too afraid to search out on his own and

starting and structuring ALL of his entrepreneurial ventures where all he had to do to make money was show up looking pretty,

AND HE dumped ME. After this, to gather what I believe is just on-demand emotional support and babysitting, he speaks to all the newer, younger, less-apt girlfriends about how I identify myself, both gender and sexual, as confusing for him. At first, my curves and sexual openness were point of pride, and now, I seem to befuddle him? We were friends in the beginning, and this was really heartbreaking on several levels – I mean I was crushed. But then, later - he was REALLY mystified when he saw me a few months after his normal girl turned out to be a liar and utterly bat-shit and I was not only smiling, getting enough sex (FINALLY), having tons of fun with my friends, rebuilding my OWN financial freedom without his universal beauty, but… fifty one pounds lighter than he left me! But my image OF ME doesn’t depend on him OR anyone else! From this, I learned that A) my image of my body and beauty is up to ME. I realized I loved ALL versions of myself and how could one not feel good knowing that, and 2) I cannot and WILL NOT EVER tolerate intolerance, in any form, ever again. I immediately started feeling worthy enough to speak UP for myself. I seemed to have lost weight without even really trying. I was actually afraid and embarrassed to say this because of all the people who struggle with their efforts to lose weight and I didn’t want to seem that I was not being empathetic to that. For a while, the dysmorphic view of my body persisted because I didn’t allow myself to be proud about it. BUT THEN CAME LIZZO! Losing so much weight so quickly was, yes, an advantage jumping back in to dating game with both sexes, garnering all of it – it’s all mine…. just so you know. There’s none left for anyone else, by the way. I have ALL of the sex. It’s all for me now. But I think for me, my eating and weight gain was indeed emotional…and I stopped EATING my emotions. Though…I don’t know right now if I’m FUCKING my emotions…I might be, since I’m pretty much dating anything walks my way – seriously, I’m on a roll right now. I can’t stop. I’ll even travel to it – I don’t give a shit. I will TAKE THE “W”! But yeah, I’ll bring it up next therapy session and see what she thinks. It’s pertinent that feeling good doesn’t excuse addictions and we all have our pastimes, demons, poisons and weaknesses – still, feel good, but do no harm,

Feeling Good 2020

October 11, 2019

right? Hey, I’m still growing. I could do a ‘feel good’ joke right here, but I won’t because I’m MATURE. That’s right. (*eye roll and evil smile)

What was I saying…oh yeah…

The FUCKENING: First, to clarify, the FUCKENING – it’s that deep soul hurt that isn’t really unexpected, but when it happens it hits you harder than you ever thought it would.

My family and Southern fried friends have a lot to say about how I live, who I ‘think’ I am, and are thus, trying their hardest to SAVE me from myself and, I kid you not, SAVE my ten year old daughter from her weird and wayward mother. Oh yeah, this one’s a biggie. Yep – the FUCKENING – they are questioning my parenting. I actually love the fact that when my daughter visits both sets of grandparents, she is exposed to their traditions and goes where they go. I respect it and I teach her to respect other’s beliefs as well. I also actually love people who have a faith. Sure, I’m pretty much an agnostic Buddhist sci-fi loving hippie, but my journey landed me here after growing up in a cult (something my mom found while down on her luck searching for a better life for both of us reinforced by my iron-clad stepdad who was an elder in the cult while I was a teenager).

I went off and did a search of my own. At 19 years old, I was excommunicated from my mom’s religion, was not allowed to speak to her anymore, and as a consequence I dropped in and out of college, lived half in my car and half couch surfing with friends in five-points Atlanta for a while, went to dozens of meditation rooms, churches, tabernacles and prayer halls trying to figure this shit out for ME. I had to learn to FEEL GOOD about this shit on my own! I know what the beginning, the harried middle bits and the end of that search feels like so far and I’ve got to tell you, I respect people who have a strong faith in whatever they believe. However, (comma) when someone feels the need to SAVE me and especially when my offspring and her care and development becomes part of the discussion, let’s just say I get a tad bit defensive. I bite back…HARD.

The same reasons I admire the “faithful” are the same reasons so many of them disappoint me. Like the Suburbanite Queen Mom-club who didn’t think I heard them call me a ‘bisexual lesbian who’s just little depressed right now’! Why does this disappoint me? Oh, I don’t know…maybe because whenever they’re drunk and on a girl’s trip, you know because of all the repression, suppression, oppression and depression that invades their traditionally married, happy-at-home, God-fearin’ lives – bless their hearts – their forcing their tongue down another drunk girl’s throat…and I know all their secrets. I know the stunt of, not all, but some – a good number – the ‘heroic event-planning Becky of the neighborhood’ that just got caught up playing pretend.

Feeling Good 2020

October 11, 2019

This is disappointing because isn’t being faithful all ABOUT walking in your TRUTH?

I tell my daughter all the time, mommy will ALWAYS tell you the truth. I remind her that if she is angry, sad, mad or confused by me or the world, to just let me know and I will ALWAYS be honest with her, even when it’s scary and even when it hurts. I tell her this because I know Becky’s daughter Bailey won’t tell her this at school. I also know that no one tells Becky this either. NO ONE EVER HAS! And whenever I feel left out of the mommy circles, whenever I feel guilty for traveling and working, I remember that I’m out of the endless, fake, ticker-tape-running bullshit…the Becky’s and Debbie’s and Nikky’s of Suburbia can trash my being away traveling for my writing, they judge constantly how and when I could and should be sitting across from them at every PTA shindig and church picnic, I try to remember that…they like playing pretend. How some of them are living – it’s not ANYONE’s real truth. It doesn’t feel good to a lot of them anyway. It’s definitely not me and I LOVE that.

And then…I get crafty.

And I walk my truth hard, and I don’t mince my words about who I am and how I live and whoever I love or what I choose

And then, I write more scripts…

And y’all, I promise you, next year, it’s going to feel DAMN GOOD that my daughter has the weirdest mom on the block.

Yep – I think THAT’s what makes me feel the BEST.

~T