Muchness and Light

Only a crazy little thing I read....

I was both pleased and shocked to have two pieces from DivorcedMoms.com make The Huffington Post last week.  The first one, "8 Lessons Every Newly Single Woman Should Learn", had gotten great feedback from both its original post on Divorced Moms and later when it was picked up by Maria Shriver.  And not just from people who knew me.

When Divorced Moms ran "An Open Letter To The Dudes Dating My Mom", again there was positive feedback.  But by the time it got to HuffingtonPost.com, all Hell broke loose. 

"Dear child of my girlfriend, Lose the attitude! Your father may be your father but guess what, he now has visitation. I will be the one taking care of your daily needs. I will feed you when your father doesn't pay his support. I will be the one who has to comfort your mother when you're being a spiteful teenager. I will make sure you get to school on time. I will be the one that makes sure your homework is finished. I will have all the responsibilities of being your father, without your love and devotion, and I will be happy to do it because I love your mother."

"Best. Comment. Ever! The article just reeked of typical teenage self-importance and egocentricity."

"Stay away from single moms I guess. Thanks, snotty girl. :)"

"Sweet Jesus what a petulant little brat."

"Child... balance #2 against #8. Your mother has a right to build a life with a companion who will be there with her as a partner until death. That is not going to be you. That would not have been you if your mother had stayed with your biological father, and it's not going to be you if she never gets married again. If your mother chooses a companion for the rest of her life, that relationship will come 'first' in her (and his) life. You are expected to leave your mother's home and build your own independent life, with or without a companion.

You, child, should take a step back and learn about healthy life companionships from your mother and her man. If they are putting their relationship first, and it's that which allows them to build a stable, safe home for any children involved, they are doing the best thing possible for the children. If what you are learning from your parents is that partners are temporary and expendable, I feel sorry for you. Your parents are messing up big time, and they are teaching you to pass it forward to your own children, who will expect to come 'first', while you treat your life partner with disdain and as something disposable."

When Divorced Moms originally ran the piece, I included a picture of a pre-teen boy.  I have two sons, with whom I had talked about these issues and the idea of what they would want someone to know.  What were their fears, at 13 and 9?

"Love this! I have two boys and it really hit the mark:). Well done."

When HuffPost ran it, they included a picture of a young teen girl.  Otherwise there were no differences in the article, which is entirely gender-neutral.  Intentionally. 

Maybe it's a difference in audience, though Divorced Moms works closely with HuffPost to share appropriate pieces for their Divorce section, so there's certainly some crossover in readership. 

I'd like to respond to a few things, though:

1)      A grown-ass woman wrote this piece, not a teenage anything.  I'm sure DM and HP would both be willing to run a cogent, well-written article by a teenager, but that's not terribly common.  And that's not what happened here, hence the author link in the article.

2)      It wasn't written with boys or girls in mind.  I was careful not to make it about my sons, even though I did choose a picture of a boy.  That's what's usually in my mind when I'm writing about parenting through divorce.  The gender bias that was inferred from this piece blew my damn mind. 

3)      If it has a tone of self-importance, that's because the voice of the piece is a kid.  Children are egocentric by their very nature.  Any empathy they've developed in childhood is comparatively limited, and a lot of it is thrown out the window in adolescence.  They are self-centered and moody and demanding.  It's part of the process of growing into their independent adulthood.  Even the best teens can be utter assholes when the time is right.

4)      This is an article about dating, not marriage.  Dating doesn't always mean going to dinner three times a week with the next person you'll marry.  I never, ever take a shot at step-parents or those who fill the spaces of a missing parent to the best of their ability.  That's a unique relationship, though, and will never replace the bond of a parent—no matter the reason for the absence.  Ask my step-dad.

5)      All I said was that Dad wasn't around as much as the kid would like for him to be.  The kid would like Dad to be living in the house again, generally.  The kid would like to be able to see both Mom and Dad all the time, on demand.  That's not how divorce works.  That doesn't mean Dad is a deadbeat or absentee father.  I know many non-custodial fathers who maintain great relationships with their kids.  And if Dad is deceased, no one will ever be able to fully fill that void.

6)      The only unconditional love is that of a parent for child.  Period.  Mom will always love her child unconditionally, no matter how much she fucks it up.  If Mom is successful at her job, she will raise the kid to be a self-sufficient, healthy, productive member of society.  But that child will always be an integral part of her life, even well into adulthood.  That doesn't mean there's not room for anyone else, and sometimes other relationships take priority, but Mom will love her babies no matter what.  You, Mr. Dude, will have to work for that love, the same way Mom will have to work for yours.  That one's not guaranteed.  Ask my ex-husband.

After the feedback became a little snarky, Queen Frostine messaged me from Paris to say, "Yay!  You've been trolled!" 

The truth is, any readership is better than no readership.  I don't mind the comments, even when they seem so blatantly misconstrued.  I know from my own experience that for every person who takes the time to post a response, there are twenty others who just read it and keep going. 

A very special thanks goes out to WGST's Rich Sullivan for inviting me on "The Sully Show" this afternoon.  I'm scheduled to do an interview with WGN's "The Bill and Wendy Show" tomorrow. 

I'll keep talking, whether or not anyone is listening.

 

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DivorcedMoms.com | Article

An Open Letter To The Dudes Dating My Mom

She's super-freaky, yow.

I am deviant. 

I don't mean in the connoted sense of criminal or sexually degenerate—though there's certainly a story or two about that.  What I mean is, I violate social norms. 

What is "normal" is determined by every society, big and small, for that culture in that time.  I am generally law-abiding and productive, but my personality—the persona of Stephanie—is often camped firmly in the fringe of normal. 

Pretty much everything falls onto a bell curve.  If you classify virtually anything and rank and sort it, then graph it in that mathematical way that has eluded me for years, it makes a pretty, curvy shape, in which the majority of "stuff" is in the high center and the extremes are on the low sides. 

I'm almost always on one of those tapered ends.   

Doing my neverending homework this week, I was reading about social deviance.  My textbook was talking about different sociological viewpoints of deviance.  Emile Durkheim's structural-functional analysis says that deviance is a necessary function of society.  What is unnormal is defined by what is normal and vice versa—there can be no evil without good.  How a society responds to deviance clarifies its moral boundaries and brings people together in the process, sometimes encouraging social change. 

Robert Merton goes on to purport his strain theory, which basically says that some deviance may be necessary for society to function but that too much, especially when caused by a lack of means to help members of a society achieve cultural goals, places a strain on that society.  Conforming to cultural goals through approved means can become difficult, if not impossible, when there are no opportunities to do so.  This points to why street crime is so prevalent in poor neighborhoods, where people don't have the educational and socioeconomic means to provide for themselves or further lives outside of the poverty and circumstance they've been socialized in. 

Eventually, deviant subcultures can form: criminal, conflict, or retreatist. 

Walter B. Miller adds that subcultures have certain characteristics, no matter their underlying cause:

• trouble – frequent conflicts with authority figures
• toughness – especially value of physical size, strength, and agility
• smartness – ability to outthink others
• need for excitement
• belief in fate
• desire for freedom

I am a deviant subculture unto myself.

I've always been at odds with authority figures.  I've never been inclined to listen to someone just because they were in charge or I was supposed to do so; if they could give me a reason to respect them, I would.  If not, I would question it and fight back.  I am certainly taller and bigger and larger, both physically and mentally, than most people.  All that testing when I was a kid proved I was smarter than even the above-average bear.  I'm easily bored and constantly shifting gears to the next adventure.  I have a strong belief in both fate and Fate.  And I want nothing more than to be free to live my life as I see is best for me. 

As ridiculous as it sounds to say I rebelled and formed my own subculture, that's kind of exactly what happened over the last four years.  I was unhappy—fat, in a crumbling marriage, unfulfilled in most aspects of my life, seeing no way out—and I fought back.  I had everything everyone says they want, and I was miserable.  I bucked the norm and started to live as Stephanie, more than Wife and Mom and Daughter. 

I am finding more opportunity now, because I am making more opportunity for myself.  Working three part-time jobs and being in school full time, plus being a full-time mom, is hard as hell, but it was my choice.  More than a couple of people have suggested I should find another husband to support me and pay for my life.  Fuck that.  If I can't rely on my own talents and worth, no one else should be able to, either.  (Conflict subculture.)

There are days I want to run away and leave it all behind.  (Retreatist subculture.)  I often talk about living on Glamazon Island, where men aren't allowed to live—unless they're a Hooha and only then until they grow up.  (Hoohas are the general name for children of inhabitants of Glamazon Island, 'cause that's where they came from.)  Eventually Glamazon Island will just be me and my girls, having tea parties and craft time on the beach every afternoon, before our daily walk. 

(There are all kinds of secondary plans, involving whose daughter is in charge of defenses and ninja skills to protect us from the ousted Hooha forces that invade on giant, flying Death Chickens.)  (This is also why someone recently told me that my mind is like a playground for adults.) 

Look: I am as batshit as they come.  And it's not that I strive to be substantially different from everyone else.  I am not like other girls because I'm just made that way.  I don't live in the middle of the bell curve because I'm not happy in the medium.  My place of comfort is pretty far removed from most other people's.

And I am happy that way.  It can make for some pretty extravagant turmoil sometimes.  It can be hard, being able to understand emotional extremes so readily because I have lived them.  But I can't imagine being normal.  Maybe if I were, I wouldn't really know the difference.  What I do know is that my pretending to be normal did no damn good for anyone.   

So I embrace my differences and live them as fully as I can.  As Queen Frostine joked yesterday, "The standard deviation is not enough for a kinky statistician." 

But that gives me hope that somewhere there's a 6'4, 240-pound, dark-haired, blue-eyed, Irish statistician who might be able to keep up with me.

 

For all of us girls who don't fit in, I say go Amazonian.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is an intro to Sociology.  In this past week's chapter on social interaction, there was an explanation of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis, in which Goffman equates social interaction to theatrical performance.

From Wikipedia:

In dramaturgical sociology it is argued that the elements of human interactions are dependent upon time, place, and audience.  In other words, to Goffman, the self is a sense of who one is, a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate scene being presented.  Goffman forms a theatrical metaphor in defining the method in which one human being presents itself to another based on cultural values, norms, and expectations.  Performances can have disruptions (actors are aware of such), but most are successful.  The goal of this presentation of self is acceptance from the audience through carefully conducted performance.  If the actor succeeds, the audience will view the actor as he or she wants to be viewed.

The text for this class, Society: The Basics, goes through several pages of explaining the perspective and then addresses the ideology in terms of gender as a "central element in personal performances".

Demeanor

Demeanor... is a clue to social power.  Because women generally occupy positions of less power, demeanor is a gender issue as well.  40 percent of all working women in the United States hold secretarial or service jobs under the direct control of supervisors who are usually men.  Women, then, learn to craft their personal performances more carefully than men and defer to men more often in everyday interaction.

Use of Space

Power plays a key role here; the more power you have, the more space you use.  Men typically command more space than women, whether pacing back and forth before an audience or casually stretching out on a bench.  Our culture has traditionally measured femininity by how little space women occupy—the standard of "daintiness"—and masculinity by how much territory a man controls—the standard of "turf".

Just about everywhere, men (with their greater social power) often intrude into women's personal space.  If a woman moves into a man's personal space, however, he is likely to take it as a sign of sexual interest.

Staring, Smiling, and Touching

In conversations, women hold eye contact more than men.  When men stare at women, they are claiming social dominance and defining women as sexual objects.

Although it often shows pleasure, smiling can also be a sign of trying to please someone or of submission.  In a male-dominated world, it is not surprising that women smile more than men.

Touching suggests intimacy and caring.  Apart from close relationships, however, touching is generally something men do to women.  [several examples given]  The intent of the touching may be harmless and may bring little response, but it amounts to a subtle ritual by which men claim dominance over women.

I say all the time that I'm not like other girls.  According to this analysis, I am a man. 

In my glamazonianness, I take up far more space than most women.  Even after the weight loss, I'm still a 5'11, curvy size 10/12.  Hell, I'm larger than a lot of men I know.  Now that I'm considered a "normal" size, I'm still often uncomfortable when I see myself compared to other women, including my female friends whom I tower over and dwarf, physically.

I complain all the time that men seem intimidated by me and that it's a special breed who has the balls to actually approach me and invade my personal space—usually the ones who are letting me know all too blatantly that they want to fuck me. 

I stare at people all the time, though that has a strange connotation.  I'm not staring with the intent to ogle anyone; I am often regarding and watching them to see who and what they are.  People fascinate me—the way they move and act as souls but also the structure of different human bodies.  I tend to compare female form more than male, but I also have this theory about there being a certain number of combinations of physical attributes that work together to make people attractive, kind of like my own, screwy Beauty Ideal. 

I do smile a lot if I'm comfortable—it comes with the raucous laughter.  But in social situations, especially if I'm alone or somewhere unfamiliar, I tend to lock my jaw and look bored as I stare ahead of me.  I don't tend to give other people any noticeable attention until I decide it's time.  (That's not to say I'm not paying attention—never make that assumption.)  And when I do pay attention to people, I am a very touchy girl.  I make a lot of small contacts, in the midst of huge hand gestures, when I'm talking with someone. 

Obviously I don't really think I'm a man in ewe's clothing.  Hot Pocket and I decided ages ago that we were each men in past lives but that I didn't really enjoy it while she probably did.  I am intensely feminine, almost to the point of contradiction at times.

What I am, as I realized finally last summer, is a very alpha female.  It may present in a non-traditional way (off-off-Broadway), but it is part of my role, of the persona I constantly craft and refine as I present it to other people in my day-to-day interactions.  Interestingly, when I find myself faced by a more dominant male, I often slouch and become quieter in some subconscious attempt to take up less of their space in deference.

In some ways, especially by modern America's statistical and cultural standards, I am a perfectly normal woman—41, divorced, mother of two, middle class.  In other ways, I am larger than life, sometimes quite literally.  From my perspective, though, I am perfectly normal, which is good since this is the only way I know how to be.

 

My two cents is worth ten grand.

Childhood molestation.  Parental divorce.  Teenage date rape.  Abusive boyfriend.  Suicide attempts.  Morbid obesity and body image issues.  Marriage gone horrible awry.  Series of unhealthy romantic relationships with unavailable men. 

That's the quick and dirty laundry list of the bullshit that led me to now.  But that is not me.

Like so many other people, I fulfill a statistic.  According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, 9.2% of victimized children are sexually assaulted.  1 in 5 girls are victims of sexual abuse.  3 of 4 children who are sexually assaulted are victimized by someone they know well.  63% of women who suffer abuse by a family member also report rape or attempted rape after the age of 14. 

50% of children in America live through the divorce of their parents.  Adults whose parents were divorced are 50% more likely to divorce themselves. 

10% of high-schoolers are physically abused by their dating partner.  50% of youth who are victims of both physical and sexual assault attempt suicide.

15% of Americans are obese.  6.6% are morbidly obese. 

40% of people have maladaptive attachments in adult relationships, driven by the events of their past—with the seeds of dysfunction often beginning in early childhood. 

I am not special.

I talk very openly in public and in private about all of these things.  I didn't for a very long time.  There was certainly a sense of shame about all of it.  When I came to the understanding that keeping these things in secret only perpetuated that cycle of shame that never should've been mine, I began to attack these issues head-on and put them into a healthy perspective.  They've been analyzed and discussed and dealt with, at least until some other issue arises that is a direct or indirect result of what happened.

Muchness and Light was started, in part, as an outlet for dealing with the transformations that came from that self-scrutiny.  Hell, I wrote a book about a lot of it. 

But if you meet me in person, I will never offer you my hand and say, "Hi, I'm Stephanie.  I'm a victim."

I don't live like that.  I don't think like that.  Stephanie is not defined by her past, but she sure as hell is shaped by those events. 

Sometimes there's a reason to make parallels to something that happened with some new event in my life.  Usually it's because there's a problem.  Often the root of my problems surround how I crave and strive for intimacy and love from another person.  I do have times when I feel unloved and worthless, and that's when the self-analysis can become brutal.

I've written a few times about my sense of worth, both to myself and to the people I love.  Regardless of how it seems sometimes, I am acutely aware of my inherent value as a mother and a woman and a soul.  I get tripped up in my value to other people, especially when something has gone wrong. 

In my mind, as a combination of both head and heart, I have been worth very little to a lot of people in my life.  Other people's perceptions and mistakes and miscommunications shouldn't be a barometer of my value, but they often are.  And I know I'm not alone in this.

Even people who are in healthy, secure, romantic relationships see themselves in relation to their partner.  There's a natural loop of positive feedback—through words and touch and action, consideration and thought and care—that show you how your partner values you.  If they are attentive and thoughtful in their approach and recognition of you, if they are engaged with you, the neurotransmitters and hormones responsible for the physical emotion of love are released again and again.  You feel closer to, and more secure with, this other person, making you more willing to reciprocate in kind.  Then their body is responding similarly, and it's a wonderful cycle of love. 

You are important to each other and are showing the other their worth to you by supporting and cherishing and caring for them. 

But when words and actions don't match, or don't exist at all, it devalues the relationship.  Eventually it begins to undermine the self-worth of one or both partners.  If he loves me, he will care for me.  If he doesn't care for me, I am unimportant to him.  I am unimportant to the person I love, who is supposed to love me most in the world.  If that is all this special person thinks of me, I must not be worth very much to him. I must not be worth very much at all.  I am worthless.

One bad relationship shouldn't be able to damage your self-perceptions, but rarely is it one bad relationship.  There's is almost always a series of events—of romantic, erotic, platonic, and familial relationships—that build upon one another, piling on the sense of lessthanness. 

Look at it like an economy.  At birth, you're worth $1,000,000, just because you exist.  Your parents and family care for you and raise you and help you grow.  Eventually you're worth $2,000,000, and you set out into the world, socializing and developing your own interpersonal relationships outside of your family.  Your first boyfriend or girlfriend is pretty good; they add $250,000 to your value.  Your next one breaks your heart, and you lose $750,000.  Now you're at $1,500,000 when you meet your future spouse.  They add $500,000.  Your marriage adds $1,000,000.  Lost friendships deduct $300,000 each.  Kids add $5,000,000 each but have constant volatile flux for the first twenty years, so your value is in constant shift. 

When you find that you have trauma after trauma, especially when they've happened at the hands of the people who are supposed to love you most in the world, it eventually begins to feel like no one has ever or could ever help bring you back into positive territory.  No matter how hard you work to build your own value--$100,000 for graduating high school, $250,000 for college, $1,000,000 for the PhD, and $500,000 for the first great job—you're still constantly trying to overcome this deficit that's been in place and growing for as long as you can remember. 

What I want and will say I need (That's an entirely different discussion I'll get into later.) most is for just one person to step up and show me that I matter to them.  That I matter at all.  Because I was let down so many times, I don't believe in my heart that anyone is capable of loving me.  There are people capable of doing it, in general; I know many of them.  But of all of the people who have come through my life over its course thus far, it is with rare exception that anyone has ever shown up for me consistently and shown me that I am worth a damn to them. 

Even if I am worth $1,000,000 on paper, it means nothing unless someone is willing to barter for it.  It doesn't grow unless it's invested.  And if it's just used and depleted over time, it will eventually drop to $0.  Even the Hope Diamond is estimated to be worth $350,000,000, but it's just a shiny rock in a box until someone actually pays for it.

I recognize that it's not necessarily about me.  I am attracted to emotional unavailability, because it is what I have always known.  In my own maladaptation, in my own inherent brokenness, I search for people who are just as broken in their own, extreme way that is the polar opposite of my own damage.  Even if and when I learn new tools for handling that and making healthier choices, I will still be jaded by my past.  I can't forget that these things happened, and they will always be a constant, flashing caution signal as I move forward along my path.

If I build my house on a hill, I can build it with a level foundation.  I'm still building it on a hill.  There's a strong possibility that, given enough time, the foundation will shift and settle, needing to be jacked back up and supported from time to time.  I could always raze the damn hill, but that would require cost and energy to devastate miles of visible landscape to try to forget there ever was a hill in the first place. 

My hill is a slippery slope, but I fought my way to the top to plant my rainbow freak flag in the summit.  From here, there's a pretty damn amazing view.  But it's also sometimes lonely, and I'm tired of looking down and seeing all the people who shrugged and walked away from the clamber, who found themselves unworthy of escalation and therefore made me feel unworthy of their effort. 

So, yeah, sometimes I sit my ass down and cry, howling my lamentations into the wind.  Far too often it has seemed like a siren's call, bringing a reticent hero crashing into the rocks below; for rescue or marooned companionship, I don't know.  But maybe, just maybe, that song will be worth something to someone, someday.  And maybe someone else will be willing to fight their way to my summit and join me in surveying everything we've left behind. 

 

And if you feel, why can't you say? Give me a little demonstration.

After more issues with what I perceive to be the fickle behavior of men, I opened a discussion on my personal Facebook page, asking for the male perspective (although anyone who could see it was welcome to respond). 

I explained about my choice to be sometimes brutally honest with men (really everyone) about who and what I am, about getting past the ones who don't interest me or can't keep up with me, and how I then tend to attract guys who are generally as intense and colorful as I am.  They'll tell me how much they appreciate my energy and my honesty and my crazy, how I'm amazing and exactly what they've been looking for their whole damn lives, and then flake the fuck out approximately 4-6 weeks later.  They will puff their chests initially and tell me how they'll be the best man I've ever known and then just quit trying. 

So I asked if they were panicking suddenly or if men are generally liars by nature.  I also explained that I wasn't looking to bash men, that I really was trying to understand it.

Several friends, both male and female, chimed in.  The consensus was that these men likely believe what they're telling me but that maybe something just changes.  Maybe they find they weren't really as interested as they initially thought.  Maybe it's just not a good match.  Whatever the reason, they generally aren't lying about their intentions or their feelings. 

As the discussion evolved, La Bruja shared this:

I dated a bunch of emotionally unavailable men; they pushed all my hot buttons and presented me with a problem that resonated with me and that I wanted to fix!  A lot of things helped me quit doing that, and one particular book finally made it click:

 It's about adult attachment styles.  The hot and cold that an avoidant can (and does) create used to be exactly what sucked me in.  And now I don't even notice these guys.  I have no idea if this is something that you're experiencing-- the men you describe sound avoidant, in that they come on strong, read you well, say the right things, and then bail-- potentially to pop back up from time to time.  At any rate, it was an eye-opening read.

I looked at the book and dug a little deeper into attachment styles in adult relationships.  I found a quiz online, for whatever that was worth, but it pointed to my being in the "preoccupied/anxious attachment" camp. 

Oh yeah.

From Wikipedia:

People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.

Every guy I've ever been involved with will totally confirm that this describes me all too well.

As I dug even deeper, several articles point to my childhood as the root of the problem.  Inconsistent parental attachment.  Maladaptive.  Drawn to fearful- and dismissive-avoidant partners.

Note to my exes: I can classify each of you, too.

After two years of therapy, I know the what, when, and why of my issues.  I know the ins and outs of the series of events that led to these perceptions and behaviors in me.  Truthfully, that's probably better than most people ever get.  But what I don't know is how to change it.

Changing it at all is a really scary thought.  While I am not defined by the events of my past, I am certainly shaped by them.  Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and neglect left their impact, undoubtedly.  I have worked really, really hard to deal with all of those things and put them into healthy perspective.  That work is, in part, what led to my writing again, to my open exploration of my life, and to the deep self-awareness I possess as a part of the entire process.  That is what has given me the bravery to live my life and to even try to trust and love again when I have every logical reason to withdraw. 

If I change the behaviors that are so inherently a part of me, do I change me to the point that I am less than who I am now?  Do I somehow lose the muchness I worked so damn hard to find again? 

My biggest fear is that I won't be able to love as deeply and passionately and intensely as I do now.  I am afraid that I will temper that to the point that I become numb again—which is how I lived my life for far too long.  I am fearful that I will lose my dream of the all-encompassing, breathtaking, soul-shattering-and-purifying love that I have wanted most for my entire life. 

And now, I'm afraid that that dream is fallacious.  I'm questioning whether everything I've worked so hard to attain, what is of tantamount importance to me as a soul, is as illusory as it is elusive. 

To relinquish that belief could mean watching a dream die. 

But what I also know is that my perceptions are inherently skewed.  Right now, I don't know that I can trust them, and that means I can't trust myself.  Historically I have placed my trust in the people who least deserve or respect it, and that has shredded my heart time and again.  While I may know in my head that these patterns are unhealthy, I don't have the skill set to be able to approach it or think about it in any other way. 

Part of me feels like I'm starting all over again, going back to the beginning of this crazy journey I've been on for more than three years.  But the truth is that I am light years from where I was then; this is a new milestone on my path that just happens to look a lot like ones I've seen before.  There's a weird sense of emotional déjà vu.

So I'll work with my therapist to gain the tools I need to form more secure attachments and to stop attracting fragile cats.  As much as I love them and want to care for them, they'll never be able to love me back or care for me in the ways that I need.  They're just as maladaptive as I am.

La Bruja went on to say this:

Stephanie, take it from me-- you CAN deal with all of that, past damage does NOT have to define you forever, and once you have addresses these issues in your own life, you simply will not see these men anymore (nor will they see you), and you will start noticing an entirely different type of person, one who wants to have a good relationship with a nice, beautiful, intelligent woman.

And he'll amuse the living daylights out of you by marveling from time to time about how it is that you're still available.

I'll take your word for it, my wonderful friend.  God knows I can't trust my own. 

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I've volunteered you my eyes in place of facing me.

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind.

I stand up, and I'm searching for the better part of me.

During the process of divorce, especially at the beginning, life becomes almost exclusively about your children.  Obviously for people who don't have kids or who have adult children, it's a different story, but I don't know what that's like.  Living through both my parents' divorce when I was 11, as well as the last couple of years, I only have intimate knowledge of what it's like from my perspective.

Like so many couples, DH and I had brutal, nasty arguments before the separation.  We tried our best to keep them away from the boys, though I know we weren't always successful.  While we did our best to keep the energy off of them, there's no way they didn't feel the tension.  Sometimes it boiled over and disrupted their lives, occasionally waking them or turning into a heated exchange in the middle of dinner. 

The night we told them that we were separating was the worst of my life.  In that moment, I remembered very clearly being the child huddled on the couch between my parents.  They were both sadly stoic, trying to explain clearly and concisely that they were divorcing, that our lives would change, but that we were still a family who would get through this together.  Watching the boys cry the night we told them, I knew exactly how their hearts were breaking and all of the questions they'd both ask me and keep quietly and painfully to themselves. 

At first, all of my energy went into keeping them calm and safe.  With very good reason, I was even more attentive and patient with them.  I tried to make every waking moment as quality as I could muster, while also giving them space to be able to breathe and think on their own or together, away from Mom. 

Eventually I had to start living my own, private life.  I had to begin to see what being a single mom and woman was like.  A big part of that, of course, has been dating. 

My parents were very good at this.  I was about the same age as Max, so four years older than Tricky, when my parents separated.  When they each started dating, they were careful to keep those new people away from me.  I can only remember meeting two men my mom went out with, one of whom is my stepdad of more than twenty-five years.  I met a few more women with my dad, though he has always said some were nothing more than friends.  He dated one woman for several years, and she actually lived with us for a good portion of their relationship.  Both he and I are still friends with her, even though they've been broken up far, far longer than they were together. 

When I started dating Bounder and saw the potential of something more important, having him meet the boys eventually became necessary.  It wasn't that I needed them to welcome their new daddy into their life; no one will ever replace their father, whom they love very, very much.  But if he and I were going to have a relationship, we would need to spend quality, physical time together.  And, no, I don't just mean sex.  (He never, ever spent the night at my house while the boys were home.) 

Dating and being in love would have to consist of more than constant texts and emails.  Regular phone calls couldn't replace regular hugs and kisses.  While quality time and conversation are of tantamount importance to me, I am bi-lingual (in The 5 Love Languages sense) for physical touch.  The small intimacies of handholding and kisses on the cheek are just as important to me as the loving whispers and soft laughs in my ear.  I need boisterous laughter, both in and out of the bedroom. 

Of all the men I've met and gone out with since I separated from DH, the boys have only met Bounder.  Initially, it was a ten-minute, "nice to meet you" moment one afternoon.  Eventually they were okay with his coming to visit me after they went to bed, then they were comfortable with dinners together and a movie after.  We would occasionally take them out and do something with them, together.  When he and I broke up, they were sad for me but also a little sad that they wouldn't get to see him.  I handled it well (at least in front of them).  They know that I still have occasional contact with him and ask me about him from time to time. 

It's hard enough to bring someone new into my life, but my life includes two boys.  They have to be a part of anything substantial.  Not only are they the most important people in my life, I am their primary caregiver.  They spend the majority of their time in my care.  With some potential changes on the horizon, I am likely to be responsible for them even more of the time.  If I try to wait to see someone I'm dating until a night when I don't have them, it could be weeks that we have to wait. 

Relationships can't function healthily like that. 

While it was best to make the boys the main focus initially, it does no one any good for them to be the only priority.  We live in such a child-centric time, but they have to learn that they really aren't the epicenter of anyone's world but their own.  They are of an age to begin to realize there's more to life than just them. 

Stephanie is more than Mommy.

Going back to school, working small jobs while I'm doing it, makes our life very busy.  I can no longer devote all of my time and energy to their schedules.  Our family calendar is sometimes a color-coded nightmare of homework and school events and appointments.

But taking the time to be me, content and comfortable in who I am and my abilities, makes me a better woman.  Being a complete woman, who is able to both express and receive love from more than just my children, makes me a better mother. 

And it's good for them to see that Mom can go on and have a happy, healthy, productive life.  They won't always been in the house with me, no matter how often they declare that they'll always live with me.  They will eventually move on to college and relationships and the lives that they build for themselves.  I will be here (figuratively or literally, I don't know yet), living and building my own future. 

When I am happy and healthy, living my life while incorporating them into it, I show them by example.  My goal is to raise healthy young men who can handle their own shit.  My hope is that they find partners who can do the same, in part because that is what their mother modeled for them. 

 

I'll love you in your dreams, but please don't try to hold me in your arms.

It's something of an understatement to say that I am an open book.

Everything about me, all of the stories that led me to be who I am now, have been laid bare in the pages of Persona Non Grata and on these blog posts at Muchness and Light.  There may be a few other outlets—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—that show snippets of my personality, but generally everything about my past is on public display.

When I meet people for the first time, especially men, I tend to throw all of that out there at once. 

"Hi, I'm Stephanie.  I'm a lot to handle.  You will one day say it's too much and that I overwhelm you.  They all do, and I have no reason to think you're any different.  Here I am—take it or leave it!" 

It's kind of like lobbing a grenade of muchness at them and daring them to take me on. 

For all of my talk of loathing the unavailable men whom I perpetually attract, is it really I who is unavailable?

I hate it when men I care about tell me I'm too much.  It strikes a nerve in me, both because it's true and because I warned them.  Just once, I'd like not to feel that pang of I told you so that inevitably comes.

But just because I warn someone of what to expect, and how to deal with me when it happens, does that make it okay?  Does my glittery Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here sign justify my reaction when they give up hope?

If I taunt men into letting me down, I am culpable, both in giving them reason to turn away and in delighting in being able to find those reasons when it happens.  I get a little jolt from pushing their buttons, and I probably try to do it from the onset of salutation.  It's like an experiment sometimes, just to see how much it will take before their façade of availability cracks and they scurry to close the gaps before I can get my hooks into them and force them to open deeper and wider than they'd ever imagined.

And that is exactly what I do.

I test men, looking to see who will fail me and how and why.  Sometimes I know within minutes that they aren't up to the challenge, and I dust their crumbling egos from my fingertips as I walk away.  Sometimes it takes longer, in which case I become more subtle, more unintentionally manipulative in my ministrations.  They rarely see or feel it coming, though, as I do seem to have the inexplicable power to sweet talk them into smiling submission.  (Dimples and destruction.)

I told Hot Pocket that it's one of Sassafras's superpowers, the ability to hide behind a plume of pretty, swirling smoke until they're so entranced they can't help but stare dumbfounded at the glittery chaos that bats her eyes and nods her blond ponytail as she wishes what she wants for their world. 

(This is one of the many reasons that my TARDIS would be the I Dream of Jeannie bottle.)

My girls, the Castration Committee, are the ones who can accept my muchness for exactly what it is, no matter what.  They will sometimes call me out for being too much, but they never judge me for it and they never, ever turn away from it or from me.  I constantly experience the depths of love from the people who adore me no matter what.

Is it too much to want that same connection in erotic love?

It's unimaginable to me that it won't exist for me, that given everything I have lived and done and seen and experienced, that there isn't a lover who can adore me and accept me and embrace my batshit while they kiss me breathless.  I have paid so much, done so much work, to get to the place that I have the ability to love as deeply and intensely as I do, and to do it willingly and from a place of utter awareness and selflessness.  Can it really be true that there is no one worth that price?  Is there no reward for having worked this hard? 

Even asking those questions feels arrogant and makes me think I have so much more work to do.

But I don't want my book to end now.  I don't want my stories to end at 40.  I want someone, maybe more than one if that's how my journey goes, who will make new stories with me—bigger, better, faster, more!  I want someone who reminds me to breathe when I'm so excited that I stammer over my own head, but who also smiles patiently and happily when I tell them for the hundredth time that day just how and why I love them.  And I want that to be the same someone who can sit in the quiet with me and let me cry out whatever my heart can't find the words to express.  The same someone who can make time stand still and the seas to turn to dust with just one kiss. 

It comes back to the idea of expectations, what's reasonable and what's not.  Growler and Absolem would advise me to be willing to lower those expectations.  Maurice reminded me when I needed it most that doing that will only lead to tears.  Bounder reminded me that my expectations can be met in the most painful and unexpected of ways.  But Hot Pocket says it exists for me, that there's someone out there who can and will love me like that. 

I hope she's right.  It feels like she is, like she just has to be, but maybe that's my tragically romantic heart being unreasonably optimistic. 

And maybe, just maybe, someone else will get the chance to tell me, "I told you so."

With one breath, with one flow, you will know.

I have ludicrous amounts of coincidence in my life. 

It's far beyond thinking of someone and then they call.  I have quit being surprised when I dream of someone and hear from them the next day, or even when I dream very detailed, seemingly random events that later come true. 

It's really more a matter of synchronicity.  In the 1920s, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed the term to explain "the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, whereas they are unlikely to be causally related."  It's meaningful coincidence, though the events do not have to happen simultaneously and there doesn't have to be explanation of their meaning in terms of cause and effect. 

For Jung, synchronicity gave a basis to his concepts of "archetype" and "the collective unconscious".

For me, it means a whole bunch of batshit. 

It happens so often that it's become a fucking joke within the Castration Committee.  But what also regularly happens is that these patterns of synchronistic events precede the most poignant and profound moments in my life.  They are like omens for what's coming, both good and bad.

When my crying jag started last week, it took about two days to run its course.  In addition to all of the stress I've been under, Friday brought a series of events that were both unexpected and unsurprising.  Unrelated to each other, but these two currents in my life that should be skew—meaning they are not parallel and do not intersect—began to curve toward each other and resulted in a momentary traversion. 

That continuum of crisscross marked yet another landmark event in my life, specifically with Bounder—the person with whom I am most synchronous.

Days before it happened, I told Hot Pocket and Growler that something was brewing.  ("Something penis this way comes," I said.)  I could feel it, the shift in energy around me.  I'm very sensitive to such things; Absolem once told me I was like some kind of freaky, voodoo static magnet.  I just feel other people's energies.  With the people I'm closest to, I can do it from a distance.  I just know when something is wrong or happening.

The synchronicity often comes in waves, and inundations of it often herald the approaching crazy.

Right now, and especially tonight, I am swimming in portent. 

I don't know what this will be.  I almost never do.  I just know that it is coming.  It doesn't feel bad, though it does feel colossal.  Based on what happened in the past week and what I know is supposed to happen over the next month, I could take a guess as to what (and whom) in involves, but the details won't be revealed until the actual time.

Part of it is that I am open to the idea.  I am willing to see signs and meaning in the strangest of things.  I do actively look for it in my life, though I try very hard not to see more into something than is actually there.  Sometimes when I call something out and name it for being important, the person on the receiving end of the prognostication will tell me I'm full of shit.  All too often, I get to tell them I told you so.

Four hundred years ago, I would've been burned at the stake. 

I pay attention to these things, because my life has consistently shown me that there's reason for me to do so.  I get these vibes, for lack of a better term, and they almost always happen just before my path shifts dramatically. 

In the past, when it's been this strong, Fate has stepped in and forced me to come face-to-face with my next step, the impact so strong that it leaves me figuratively bruised and shaken.  She's a bitch, for sure, but I know better than to fuck with her.  There's a reason for it, every time, although I don't always see it until it's too late to even beg her to let me turn back. 

Whatever it is this time... okay.  I can rail against it and be a petulant, ungrateful little brat about it, or I can just accept that something crucial is about to happen and conserve my energy for when it actually plays out.  Someone important is going to need those energy stores, and I have the feeling that it's someone very, very important to me. 

It feels like a test, of everything that has come before, of everything I have learned over the last three years.  And I hope I'm up to the challenge.  I hope I have the skills to fight this battle—and maybe even the Vorpal sword one of us will need to slay that Jabberwocky. 

 

NOTE:

Just as I was finishing this piece, getting ready to post it, my phone popped up with a push notification from my Facebook fan page.  Earlier in the evening, I posted asking for suggestions for what to write about for a new blog post.  This is what I see when my phone got my attention:

THAT is how my life works. 

 

Getting bigger and brighter, wider and lighter.

The girls and I have agreed for ages that Growler's husband, BC, is an über-Alpha male.  In any given situation or room of people, he will quietly take control and direct almost everything that happens.  I'm sure he has moments when he can be an utter ass about it, but I've never really seen that aspect of him.  Granted, I don't live with the man.  However, I have spent a lot of time with him and in their home. 

"Alpha Male Traits" on AskMen.com outlines some basics, from the book Men 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life by Adam Bornstein and John Romaniello:

"You see, to be an Alpha male in the traditional sense simply means the most dominant within a group, or the strongest in a group or the most confident in a group. Not a person who is necessarily strong or confident in the absolute sense; just someone who, in a given group of people, most outwardly projects strength or confidence. In other words, the problem with the definition of Alpha isn’t really the assumed aggression or implied cockiness; it’s the fact that the entire foundational principle for self-value is  comparative analysis."

They outline seven characteristics of the new Alpha:

1)      helpful but not condescending

2)      confident but not cocky

3)      vain but not conceited

4)      prideful but not arrogant

5)      humble but not self-loathing

6)      tolerant but not weak

7)      dedicated but not obsessed

After Bounder and I broke up, Growler finally confided that BC never quite thought Bounder was the right match for me.  I trust BC's instincts for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he's a Fragile Cat.  Like Bounder.  And like me. 

"I don't date by committee," I said to him, meaning the girls (a.k.a. The Castration Committee), "but I'm not dating anyone from now on until they get your stamp of approval."

He laughed and agreed.

And then it hit me: BC is the Lion King.  We are part of his pride.

Let me be very, very clear that there is absolutely nothing untoward or lascivious in my relationship with BC.  He and Growler and I all know this.  Where she is part of my girlie heart, he is an extension of that and has become a very good friend to me over the last few months.  I can only hope I am responsibly reciprocal in that friendship.

Growler laughed when I called him Mufasa, but we talked at length about this concept of his protecting the women (and even some of the men) in his life and how they all care for him in return. 

I need that in my ideal mate, I thought.  Those are the traits I'm seeking.

But then it hit me again: I have those traits. 

Even though I wasn't always cultivating or fully utilizing them, they're part of my make-up. 

And then I wrote on a piece of paper, which I showed to Growler:

I am an Alpha Female looking for an Alpha Male.

"Of course you're looking for an alpha male," she laughed.  "Did you not know this?"

I shook my head, eyes wide.  "I knew that.  I didn't know—"

"You didn't know you're an Alpha female??  Honey, do you hear this?"

BC and Growler laughed and laughed, watching me enveloped by this epiphany.  I called Hot Pocket that afternoon and told her; she laughed uproariously.

"Tank [her husband] and I have talked about that a hundred times.  Did you really not know?"

Nope.

It all suddenly made sense, the ways in which I am strangely not like other girls. 

1)      incredibly loyal but sometimes self-sacrificing

2)      well-aware of my abilities but sometimes disabled by my weaknesses

3)      knowing I had damn good hair but absolutely no concept that I was pretty

4)      proud of my accomplishments though I rarely see that they amount to anything

5)      jokingly self-deprecating, sometimes to the point of dire self-criticism

6)      intensely interested in people and how they work but incredibly impatient

7)      dogged and obsessive but only about the things that are important to me

I am loud and boisterous and full-on energy, most of the time.  I am relentless but with dimples instead of a grimace.  I am a glittery ball of blond batshit who can be so insecure that she ends up fetal and crying on her own floor because no one would talk to her when she went out.  I complain that men don't talk to me in public but know damn well that I can be aloof.  They tell me I'm intimidating, but I never really understood why. 

Now I get it. 

In that competition of love and sex, it's all about who's better than whom.  Who's stronger, prettier, sexier, smarter, blahblahblah.  Women compete against each other and themselves, just as men do.  The genders also compete against each other for placement in the immediate pack.  It's not always this way, certainly, but watch what happens in a crowded bar on any given weekend night. 

I am an Alpha.

I tend to attract strong personalities.  Even Bounder once said that any man who was going to even try to approach me had better bring the big stones.  When I am approached, I tend to shoot men down pretty quickly.  It doesn't take me long to size them up and know which ones could never be enough for me and my exacting standards. 

All of my talk this year of what I wanted in a relationship points to this über-Alpha male.  All of my work for the last three years has brought me the realization that I am looking for the biggest of the Cats.  My insecurities have source in my not seeing the plain truth of myself, yet again. 

All of the monument-worthy men in my past have been Fragile Cats, certainly.  They were possibly higher ranked than I was at some point.  The moment when that shifted is the tension point that ultimately led to the demise of those relationships.  When there was no other option but subjugating my own power to please them, the relationships fell the fuck apart. 

And the ones who said they didn't deserve me, that I was too good for them, they were right.  I lowered myself to their standards in order to compete with them, hence the turmoil.  (It really was you and not me.)

Being who I am, I could see their potential.  Even if they weren't living up to what I saw, I would remind them that they could be better and more special and that I would support that in any way I could, sometimes to my own detriment.  What I realize now is that I don't just need huge potential in a partner; I need a partner who is achieving his potential.

This also means that I have to work toward my own potential.  It may not be what anyone else sees in me, but I have to be very honest with myself about both what I want to do and what I really can do.  The last year of life on my own has shown me an enormous amount of untapped possibility, and now it's time to work that. 

But I won't do it to make anyone else happy or comfortable.  I won't spend my time fighting with someone else about why and how it could be better.  I will be who I am, who I can be in my own, huge heart, and that will be exactly right for me.  If it also happens to be right for them, so be it. 

Either way, it's not my problem.

 

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Are you An Alpha Female...

A case for the "Alpha Female"

Another life for her to put down, pick it up any time she might find enough to get her high.

Things were simple when DH and I began our life together.  I moved from Birmingham to Huntsville to be with him when I was 20.  Living in a 600-square-foot apartment, there wasn't space for stuff—it was pretty much only us and some basic furniture, plus a kick-ass stereo and tons of CDs.  Within a few months, we moved into almost 1,100-square-feet and bought some bookshelves.  We got a cat.  Eventually we refused to live with less than two bathrooms and bought our first house, which was also the first house our boys called home. 

When we moved to Atlanta in 2006, we had more space than we knew how to occupy, at least for a while.  Two boys and a cat and even more stuff eventually filled our house.  And then DH left, leaving behind most of the things he owned. 

The beginning of summer triggered something in me that wanted to purge—to get rid of clutter and years' worth of crap that had outlived its usefulness to me.  I started cleaning out the boys' rooms, removing everything they hadn't worn or played with or really touched in a couple of years.  Some of it was just trash.  Some of it was given to friends whose sons would use the toys or clothes that mine had discarded.  And some of it—favorite shirts and Star Wars toys and Godzilla action figures—was packed away in storage boxes to be moved to the basement. 

But with all of DH's boxes and accessories still cluttering the storage room, where the hell was I going to put the things I actually wanted to keep?

I had to make space.  As I looked closer to see what could be removed safely (while still in entrenched in the neverending divorce), I was shocked to realize there were all of these empty boxes, stacked to the side and squirreled away amidst broken electronic devices and miles and miles of cabling. 

For years we would argue about my being a cluttered girl.  To everyone else, DH always seemed so simple and organized.  The reality is that most of our limited closet space was taken up by his stuff; my younger son and I actually shared a closet for a couple of years because DH's clothes and things took up the entirety of the master closet.  With his belongings out of sight, mine had nowhere else to be but out, which only reinforced the perception of my being a slob. 

And sometimes I can be, at least historically.  My desk is perpetually a mess, but I know where everything is.  I am undoubtedly a stacker and tend to have small piles in strategic locations.  But my desk is mine alone, and I have never liked to see everything I own spread before me all the time. 

As I started to go through the basement, I realized he never threw away anything.  (Okay, maybe that's hyperbole, but you know what I mean.)  There were receipts for stamps from 2006.  The files and desk accessories from every job he's had for the last twenty years are all in labeled boxes.  Hell, half of his clothes are still downstairs, even though he apparently can't wear most of them now.

The empty boxes, though, were what got me.  They were everywhere.  Large boxes were filled with small boxes. Crumpled bags held the empty boxes from some camera or game or computer part from three years before, where he'd kept it just in case there was a problem with it while it was under warranty.  But when the grace period expired, he never removed the box from the spot he'd originally dropped it.  The box for that Cingular Wireless Nokia 6010?  We still need that, right??

To date, I have recycled over two hundred empty boxes from the basement. 

As I looked through the remainders to see what was there, I started to think about the people I know who hoard things.  Almost everyone I know does it to some extent, whether or not they know it or even do it to the degree that it's disabling or destructive.  DH definitely hoarded things he might need again, much like my father and grandfather.  My mom hoards books and information and things that were once useful, long past their efficacy. 

Me?  I hoard memories. 

The things I keep are all reminders of some special time and place, some moment that was important to me.  There are boxes and boxes of photographs and special baby clothes and books that I read over and over to the boys when they were very young.  There are a couple of boxes of concert t-shirts that no longer fit, or souvenirs from high school, though there is very little from my childhood (by design).  Most of my music collection is a reflection of some specific point in time; my life undoubtedly has a lengthy soundtrack. 

Showing Bounder some pictures a couple of weeks ago, I realized I was waxing ecstatic about the memories behind those photographs, how I'd taken shots of my second son in exactly the same positions I'd taken them with his older brother four years prior. 

"I'm strangely sentimental," I commented, almost apologetically.

"There's nothing wrong with that," he replied.  "I don't understand why people shy away from sentimentality.  If more people were sentimental, the world would be a hell of a lot better place."

The things I keep are tangible embodiments of a small percentage of the things I remember.  I retain a lot of detail about so many things, notoriously and almost pathologically.  The boxes are filled with the proof of my life, of what I've seen and where I've been.  More importantly, they are proof of what I've felt, of some experience that either provided me a new emotional experience or reinforced one that was already special. 

But those hordes of memories are also peppered with landmines.  There are the pictures of ex-boyfriends and dead family members.  There are the videos that bring me as quickly back to a sad time as to a happy one.  There are the songs that make me miss someone who faded from my life so long ago.  Sometimes they are real and tangible things that need to be disposed.  Sometimes they are only ghosts that can still stop me dead in my tracks and reduce me to tears. 

Like everything else, they are reminders of whom and where and whence I came, of what brought me to the here and now.  As painful as some of it can be, I don't want to forget any of it.  I don't want to not be able to remember so many minute details of Stephanie that I can paint a mental image of her at any point in her time and be able to share that with anyone else who matters enough to share my story. 

But sharing my story also means having someone else share theirs with me.  And that's where the difficulties sometimes arise.  The process of moving forward sometimes includes being rear-ended by the past, by what you couldn't see in your rearview.  What you refused to look for over your shoulder.  Maybe it's your past; maybe it's someone else's. 

Sometimes it feels like competition, but you don't always know the specifics of what you're fighting, or sometimes even that you are.  This is why I try so damn hard to be bigger, better, faster, more.  If I can create something new, something unique, it is unforgettable in its own right.  If I am at the core of those memories, I only have to compete against my own ghosts.  When it comes down to it, there's only me to fuck with my own head, and I relish that hard-fought battle more than any other. 

Much the same way I'm afraid I will be forgotten by those who loved me, I am afraid I will somehow forget my own history, my own stories, my own past, or maybe that I won't remember it in as much detail as I'm accustomed.  I'm afraid that I will somehow forget myself; I've done it before and know exactly how difficult it is to remember. 

For every souvenir of memory that I box away, there are a thousand more (not hyperbole) that I discard.  Right now I'm especially fond of Instagram to be able to journal those unique moments of how I see my world, without having to keep every ticket stub or receipt or empty box. 

But for me there is no better way to remember than to write.  Sometimes what I write is a painfully detailed and exacting account of the chronology of a memory.  Sometimes it is jaded and water-colored to be more palatable to my reader or to me.  Sometimes it's a pretty lie with a minute kernel of truth hidden somewhere beneath the glitter.  All of that together makes my story.

And you will never find my story buried in an empty box.