Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

Though you drown in good intentions, you will never quench the fire. You'll give in to your desire, when the stranger comes along.

Break-ups can be foundationally shattering. The end of a long-term relationship can be shocking to the core. There is the grief that comes from severing a deep, meaningful connection, of lamenting what has been lost, but there is also a sudden shift in daily routines that now feel hollow and future plans that will never come to fruition.

The day after Rango came to get his stuff from the house, I struggled just to maintain. I woke early, fed the cats, and cried for a while before falling back asleep. At noon, I realized I needed to get up and do my normal Sunday chores. The boys would be home from their dad’s that evening, and they would be expecting clean laundry and food for the week.

Walking through the grocery store, I felt raw. I felt like everyone who passed me in the aisles could see the sadness dripping from my every pore. I was certain that my hard-fought composure would come undone if anyone spoke kindly or smiled at me.

It’s not just that the sadness is a part of the grieving process. The sadness fulfills a purpose.

When I realized the futility of the relationship, I started looking for a new therapist. Therapy had been incredibly helpful through the demise of my marriage to DH. I was fortunate to have found an incredible therapeutic partner to help guide me through a couple of years of divorce and dating and loss. But my insecurities undoubtedly played a role in the tensions and break-up with Rango, and I knew I never want to feel those things again. I never again want to feel so easily broken by another person, especially when my head knows it shouldn’t be possible.

As I did some research online, I came across the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It seemed to be especially effective in treating anxious attachers and rejection sensitivity. The idea is that we are each a Self, which is the true, whole, spiritual center of us. But we also have these discrete subpersonalities with their own intentions and needs and quirks and purpose. Each part has a specific viewpoint, developed from its interpretations of life experiences. Each has its own memories and interprets them according to its unique perspective:

• Managers handle the way we interact with the external world. They try to protect us from hurt, whether from others or from our own memories.
• Exiles are the parts that feel the worst emotions—pain, hurt, shame, fear—usually resulting from childhood trauma. Managers and Firefighters try to exile these parts to prevent their emotions from coming to the surface.
• Firefighters show up when Exiles break free and demand attention. They try to distract us from the pain, often encouraging unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms.

The goal of IFS is to allow the Self to access and connect to each subpart, healing them one by one. Thus, the Self leads the other parts in harmony and health. We become a whole, heathy person, rather than an amalgam of these smaller bits that exhaust themselves fighting to maintain a losing battle.

I have long believed that we each are made up of various persona, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone….

In an online interview reposted through the band’s Facebook page, Alex Wheeler said the title, Persona Non Grata, referred to all of the unacceptable and unwelcomed parts of everyone—the lurid, the shadowy, the hidden, the broken.

“Each of us has a persona, all the time,” he said. “I’m one persona with the band, someone a little different with my fans, someone else entirely with my wife and daughter. Sometimes that persona is ‘good’ and sometimes it’s ‘bad’. I spent a lot of time exploring the bad sides of normal, everyday people, you know? Not serial killers or rapists or anything. I wanted to look at the things regular people like to hide from the people they know and, most especially, from themselves.”

                                                                                                                                Persona Non Grata (2012)

I have, at times, named some of my subpersonalities, though I wasn’t thinking of them within the context of IFS.

• Cissie is the sweet, blond girl who never seemed to be pleasing to her parents, no matter how hard she tried. She never felt like she was enough. She was also molested for years, and she spent a lot of her time agitated and afraid. She is an Exile.
• Quinn is the rebellious teen who learned to trade sex and secrets for affection, often in an attempt to protect Cissie. She has her own anger and hurt, but she will bear it all to protect that little girl. She is a Firefighter.
• Stephie is a loud ball of angry. She will erupt and tantrum and demand her way when she feels she is being ignored. She is potentially a special subpersonality called a Tormentor. (She secretly wears that like a badge of honor.)
• Sassafras Bombalurina O’Malley is the one who reminds me to be shiny and sparkly and to tell the world to go fuck itself if it doesn’t like it. She is an eccentric, outrageous Manager who knows how to call on the Firefighters to back her up.
• Wonder Woman is the Amazonian princess who does it all, because she has to. She handles the day-to-day business of life, and she is remarkable. She is strong and capable, smart and intuitive, and she can predict everyone else’s needs and desires before they can. She is a Manager.
• Stephanie Quinn Jackson is the writer who sees it all, who arranges it and espouses the shared perspective of the others, who bears witness to it all and gives them a voice when it seems that no one else will listen. She is a Manager.

There are others, nameless but all with some variation of my face. Each has its own role and purpose in getting Stephanie through her life. Not to be confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I am not claiming to have multiple, distinct personalities. These are simply facets of my personality, and each strives in its own way to help me be secure and healthy and safe—even when its influence result in dysfunction.

The sadness is tied up with the hurt, and it’s not just from this break-up. This is hurt that hasn’t healed in 40 years. This is sadness that helps me to keep others at bay, or to curl up in bed and sleep when I should be doing productive things, so that I don’t have to feel the hurt. So I don’t have to delve back into every haunting memory and question again why I was both too little and too much. Why I wasn’t worth careful, healthy love.

None of these parts can or should ever be exorcised. Each is valuable and necessary, both as its own part and as a part of the larger whole. But the hurt can be healed enough so that it doesn’t make more hurt, create more sadness, because somewhere in there is joy and beauty. Somewhere in there is a sad and lost little girl who desperately wants to be loved.

I have to find her and help her.

We have to find her together.

 

Related articles

Muchness and Light - But if you'd known how that would sound to me, you would've taken it back and boxed it up and buried it in the ground.

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Save

You were the promise at dawn, and I was the morning after.

My head is a little haunted sometimes.

Because I horde the memories, because I keep an extraordinary amount of minutiae in there, and because I'm an intensely emotional girl, there is a constant swirl of emotion in me. In a given moment, I will drive along a certain street or hear a specific song, and it will dredge up a memory—Oh, I talked to Absolem from that parking lot or That song was playing when Bounder and I <did whatever>--and then I will re-evaluate the entire relationship. It may take hours or it may happen in an instant, but every emotion I ever felt about that person will come in waves of good and bad, roiling over each other and crashing against the shores of my heart in quick succession.

Hurricane Sassafras can be an utter bitch sometimes.

But none of those emotions are happening now. I'm not living the event that led to the original emotion. It's just an echo, a ghost.

"Ghosts can't hurt you," Rango has reminded me a hundred times. "They're powerless."

Theoretically, they have the power I allow them to have, though I don't really know how to make them feel less important. Some have just taken time to fade. There are dozens of faceless, nameless shifting shapes that are little more than a murmur in my periphery.

But then there are the others.

My therapist said to me once that our bodies have a memory of their own, that our memories play out on a deep, cellular level because our bodies were physically present for the events that occurred. As she explained it, this is why anniversaries of powerful and vividly-remembered events can bring on the same emotions that were felt originally.

Right now, at this time of year, I am in a cycle of dozens of anniversaries. For whatever reason, the period from mid-April to the beginning of August is peppered with anniversaries like a minefield of memories. They run the gamut from wonderful to confusing to downright heartbreaking—and sometimes all three at once.

My therapist also had me work on sitting with my emotions, on allowing them to fall in and around me and just be, without reacting or overreacting to them, naming them and being aware of what they were and where they came from. But with emotions constantly on this rollercoaster down Memory Lane, it's too easy for me to become stuck in place, sitting, paralyzed in my useless fear.

And I do know that the fear is pointless and counterproductive. In my head, I am fully aware that what I'm feeling is wrapping its cold hand around my heart because I let it. I know that the ghosts are vaporous re-imaginings of what I remember, vacillating around my perspective at the moment that I am reminded of them.

But what is it about the others that I can't quite seem to escape them fully?

Absolem was both witness and accomplice to the inner transformations that were the cause of so much outer revolution. There are days I think of something that I should tell him and then remember that we no longer have that relationship, that I can't just message him and tell him to call me when he gets a chance. While I miss that friendship, I do not miss the emotional craziness that sometimes ensued because of it. I don't miss those tears, but I do sometimes change the route I drive just to avoid passing my own ghost.

Bounder was... Bounder. He was the one who broke my heart and wouldn't give me the closure I asked for. There was an ending—and one that took far longer to play out than we were actually a couple—but it didn't come how I felt like it should've, and it never will. Because he lives close by, I sometimes pass him on the street. It's not a ghost with him so much as a poltergeist, make me nauseated and ill from a sucker punch to the gut.

There are still some songs I just. can't. bear. to hear.

And with DH, it seems like there should be more than with the others, but there's not. In fact, it happens far less often than it used to. Yes, I've had almost three years to put that damage behind me. Yes, I still have to deal with his shit in my basement.

But I can also see the very best of him every single day in our boys. I chose to have two children with him for a reason, and Max and Tricky remind me all the time of how that decision was the best one I ever made. Somehow I've been able to unpack and repack all of that emotional baggage and keep only what mattered, and it's very rare that those memories have the power to upend me.

So I've been a bit on edge for the last few days. I told the Castration Committee that I felt like I was about to crawl out of my own damn skin again. Last night, the first good spring storm came, thunder like the laughter of those specters. I sat on my porch swing, feeling the cold spray of torrential rain on the breeze like phantasmal fingers stroking along my neck. I let the emotions come and swing with me until I thought I would choke on my own breath.

What was I feeling? Why was I feeling it?

I couldn't name it. I couldn't exorcise it.

One of Rango's superpowers is to be able to replace those memories with his own, our own. He is a Ghostslayer Extraordinaire.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just hold me."

Is it that you miss them? One of them?

No.

Is there something you're not getting that you need?

Not at all.

It wasn't that I was missing anyone else. I hate to compare old loves—each relationship was special for its own reason—but Rango is undeniably so much more than any of the others. There is nothing any of them was or has that he doesn't offer to me willingly and completely.

"Sometimes I just... hurt," I whispered to Rango.

It just hurts.

And there it was. Just hurt. Not grief or anger or longing or sorrow or love. Just hurt that hasn't fully healed. It doesn't feel like it did when the wounds were fresh, but it still aches sometimes when I twist just right or move too quickly in an unexpected direction. Sometimes I just bump the old wound.

And somehow, giving that to Rango makes the hurt fade.

He kisses me and makes me better.

Today, the ghosts are mostly quiet. They're just kind of hanging out and busying themselves with other things, playing quietly off in the distance. I can feel their presence, see them out of the corner of my eye, but I'm doing my best to stay out of their line of sight.

Somewhere between them and me is him, Rango, who will stand guard for as long as I need.

I'm not so scared anymore.

 

I'm sorry to interrupt. It's just I'm constantly on the cusp of trying to kiss you.

Two evenings ago, I went to the grocery store, as I so often do during the course of Mom Duty.  I stopped to put gas in my car (which I hate to do more than anything in the world).  Just as I switched off my ignition, my phone dinged with a message from an ex and another one drove by.  Simultaneously.

Oh hell!

Over the last year, I've been out with a couple dozen men.  Most did not get a second chance.  I currently have a listed of 18 blocked numbers in my phone.  (FYI, on an iPhone, texts from blocked numbers are lost in the ether with no response to the sender.  Phone calls will go straight to voicemail.  Anything recorded stays hidden unless you unblock the number, at which point they show up in a special voicemail directory.) 

I didn't shoot them all down immediately.  I'm still casual friends with a couple of the guys I met.  (At least four of you are Facebook friends.) 

But there were a select few who drew my heart into theirs.  We moved past the point of casual chat to an actual relationship.

I've talked at length about my super ability to attract Fragile Cats.  I swear some days it's like my front door is wide open, and they just saunter across my threshold and demand to be fed and pet, twisting their long tails around my legs and tripping me up before I even realize they're there.  Ultimately they are skittish and unavailable, whether emotionally or logistically, though they'll almost always declare that's not the case.  One even swore he wasn't a cat at all—that he was, in fact, a coyote. 

When I realize they're skittish and about to run, I always offer them time and space.  Always.  They never take the chance.  Inevitably, they freak out and bail and let me down in some ludicrously soul-wrenching way.  I toss them out in my anger but always relent a few days later, letting them stew in the sun on my front porch.  Where I leave them a saucer of cream.  And the key to my back door. 

(There are a lot of always in that paragraph.  Note the pattern here.)

I am impossibly accommodating with these men.  I am equally forgiving and supplicating, because I completely understand how they work; I get why they're so easily spooked, and somehow I continue to hope that they will see something special enough in me to be worth their effort to at least try to correct their behavior.  For themselves and for me.  I care about them—hell, I even loved two of them—so of course I would do everything possible to make it work, to give them reason to meet me halfway.  Or at least a quarter of the way.  (I'm a long-legged resourceful girl; I can close the gap myself.)   

I'm unable to just cut someone like that out of my life at the slightest provocation.  It feels inherently wrong to me, to disregard someone you care about so much.  Because of my history and expectations, I have an unusually (annoyingly) high tolerance for douchebaggery.  I'm incapable of writing them off right away, though God knows the Castration Committee wishes I would learn how. 

But when they fuck it up again, that's when I'm done.  Usually.  Or I try to be.  (Again, my issues with boundaries.)

What pisses me off, though, is the text or email or phone call a few months later, telling me how much they miss me, how they think about me and wish things had gone differently.

You miss me?  Fuck you!

Every single one of them had the chance at something extraordinary.  They knew it at the time and while they were letting it go.  They would profess their care for me while throwing up their hands, apologizing for hurting me while they slapped me across the face.  (Figuratively, not literally.  The Castration Committee would harm me if I let that shit happen.  Again.)

I'm not a toy to be discarded and brought back out months later, when you realize you'd forgotten how much fun it was to play with me.  I am a really spectacular woman who cared deeply for you, and you dismissed me with a multitude of reasons and excuses.  You told me to my face that I mattered while you crossed your fingers behind your back. 

Fuck you.

And with all of them but one I am able to comfortably and happily live in a healthily detached state.  It is still a struggle, every goddamn day, to keep that one in perspective, to actively remind myself of the bad that came with him and how it almost sucked the good out of me. 

That's the one who appears when I least expect it but when I am least surprised.  That's the one who lives the closest, who I sometimes pass on the road... the one who reads my blog regularly because he misses my voice and this is the closest he can bring himself to hearing me.  The one who got away but it is never far away at all—even at 3 a.m. when we're both lying in bed missing the other.  The one who altered everything, for whom I altered everything, but who can't get his big, beautiful head out of his ass long enough to admit that he fucked it up and shouldn't have given up so goddamn quickly. 

He will read this.  He'll know it's directed at him.  He will likely continue to lurk, waiting for the time he sees that I've moved on with someone else and am in a safe enough space that he can be my friend again. 

But he's also the one I can never be friends with, even though I miss him like mad.  He's the one I loved so deeply and so passionately that the wounds of losing him are still sensitive and raw.  They'll heal eventually, but I'll be left with more scars that leave numb, faded spots on my surface. 

Maybe those are the mars I'll finally tattoo with chains, turning something ugly into something beautiful.

The rest of them can go to Hell.  He's the only one I'd follow into those depths to bring out or join, whatever it took to keep him safe. 

Some of the others will read this, too.  They'll start to think it's about them and then feel the pang! when they realize they're mistaken.  Again. 

But to every single one of you, you had your chance.  You can miss me all you want.  It doesn't change a thing. 

Unless you're that one. 

 

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.

 

Where the clouds pull apart and the moon changes faces, in the quiet, secret places, are you there? Are you there?

I am kind of petrified of the dark. 

I always have been.  I went to sleep every night with my light on until I was in my early teens. 

It's not the darkness, per se, that's frightening; it's what may be lurking inside those shadows that scares the bejeezus out of me.  Too many horror movies when I was far too young to be watching them did nothing to help allay my fears.  Rousing in the middle of the night, I always imagine I see some indistinct, humanoid shape in the corner of the room.  And if I have to go into the hallway or (God forbid) the basement at night, it's always Pinhead that's waiting at the end of my path. 

But the darkness itself... well, that's kind of a different story. 

I love being comfortably in the quiet shadow.  I feel like I can bend and twist the shade into the cover I need, be it a lot or a little.  It's always been the place I was most free to dismiss my misgivings and shortcomings, to release my inhibitions and let my own inner light pulse dimly or brilliantly, as the moment demanded. 

To take away so much of my most used sense forces the others to compensate.  While I may be myopic in shadow, sound and touch become much more keen.  Music and sensation feel electric, and I am wholly entranced by that feeling. 

But that darkness also holds a silence that's begging to be heard.  The stillness contained therein demands a certain consideration, and I am enduringly willing to let that hold my attention, to envelope me in its secrets and dreams and fantasies. 

Inevitably, though, the light returns.  The daylight isn't by default a terrible thing.  It is beautiful and comforting in its own right.  It can also be harsh and terrifyingly revealing.  But I can't hide in the light.  There's little room to be covert when you're illuminated.  Somewhere, between the dark and the light, is the place I am most balanced and most erratic, feeling the tug of two different kinds of truths, their constancy pulling in opposite directions and holding me firmly in momentary stasis. 

Well you're in and out and up and down and halfway in between.

Tiff and I had a chat this morning about my assertion that I am, at heart, a wallflower.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," she said.

No, really, I am.  Okay, maybe not so much now, but historically?  Yes. 

At least, I always thought so. 

As a child, I was shy.  Not in a painful way, not so much so that I couldn't say my name in public or actually answer a direct question.  But I was slow to engage other people and tended to stand back.  In peer groups, I was almost always the last chosen for games—though it didn't help that I was a fat, out-of-district transplant, moved to a school with a gifted program.  I wasn't like my classmates, and I was generally happy that way.  I didn't socialize with them away from school, I didn't dress like they did, and I didn't think like they did.

In junior high, I had a few good friends, but I tended to stay on the outskirts.  Sometimes it was, again, because of my history of being generally unpopular.  Blending into a crowded hallway let me stay anonymously out of the line of middle-school-fire. 

When I got to high school, though, some of that changed.  It was a small magnet school with about 150 students across four grades.  We were all gifted outcasts who were encouraged to flaunt our eccentricities, and we did it with abandon.  RLC was a revelatory experience for virtually everyone who went there.  Most students found their identities within the walls of that old, mustard-colored building.  Some found they didn't really fit the amoebic mold of gifted eccentric and chose to return to their regularly scheduled programming, leaving RLC for a big, normal high school. 

Even then, though, I had an amazing talent for being able to go unnoticed.  I could wedge my way through a situation quietly and garner as little attention as I wanted.  Usually.  I really did learn at an early age when to keep my mouth shut—though I know some of you who read this will argue that point until the cows come home.  (You're all a bunch of contrarians anyway, so shush it.)  I can be sociable with almost anyone, but I can also be non-existent when it suits me. 

At least, I always thought so.

I'm an Amazon.  I'm 5'11 with broad shoulders and a loud, stomping step and a louder, projecting voice.  (Thank you, choir.)  I am often brash and bold and demanding, though usually with the sweetest of intentions and persuasions. 

If I'm in a very crowded situation—a store or a show, for instance—I can maneuver quickly and quietly through that sea of people and get to where I need to be, with very little flourish.  I don't have to be pushing and demanding to navigate the crowd.  Hence, my wallflower super power.

It occurred to me as I was talking to Tiff that maybe I'm a little more foreboding than I thought.  Maybe my general size and aspect make people just get the fuck out of my way.  When I'm in that situation, I tend to stand very tall, shoulders back, tits forward like a shield.  Maybe that countenance is enough to make people want to step aside.  I can smile and say please and excuse me, but I sometimes don't.  I'm incredibly adept at giving the get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way look, and people usually do.  I often don't have to say anything at all.  They just move. 

I'm much, much more extroverted now than I used to be.  It's taken me years to grow into that.  But I still have times when I like to skirt the edges, to slide my way along the wall and go unnoticed.  Whether people really aren't noticing or they're looking away for some other reason, I have no idea.  It doesn't really matter, either.  I'll still use that ability, as needed, to maneuver along my path.  Sometimes it's better than bulldozing my way through. 

What I don't want to do is find myself paralyzed, stock still, waiting for someone or something else to come along and make me move.  It happens every so often, the fear of my life and my surroundings freezing me into submission.  That's when I have to feel my way carefully, inching along slowly, extending my vines blindly until I can find the sun. 

 

Say what you got to say 'til I feel it.

So I had about 300 fans on my Facebook page a few days ago.  It's down a few after I posted a couple of things that I knew might be a bit touchy.  (Yeah, Edmund's a real guy.  And he's really an asshat.)  I also know that my usage of the occasional f-bomb may turn a few people off, though I don't really give a damn about that.

But the piece on the Twilight Singers and why I love Greg Dulli (Hear that, Greg?  I love you.  We should totally hang when you're in Atlanta in May.  Somebody pass along that message, will ya?), and the Princess story about Vain Edmund generated a lot of traffic for me over the last few days.  All of that came on the heels of my having added new analytics to the blog, to get a better feel for who's reading my stuff. 

I've had visitors from twenty-two states and twelve countries in that time.  Georgia, Alabama, and California lead the pack.  Sometimes I can almost tell who a certain reader from an area was.  Hits from Lilburn, GA, or Lancaster, PA, for example--I can hazard a guess on who you are likely to be.  Lakeland, FL--hi, Kevin A!  (Are you coming for the Twilight Singers show?  Seriously!)  But you, New Orleans and Los Angeles and New York: I have no idea who you are.  I could guess on one or two of the hits, but there's no way for me to be 100% positive. 

So I'm asking you to de-lurk. 

Just for a day. 

Leave me a comment below, say hello and where you're from (if you'd like).  You can tell me something good.  You can tell me I suck, if you think it will make you feel better.  Tell me anything.  I want to know who you are. 

It's helpful to me to know who I'm reaching, and even better if I know why.  What is it about what I do that keeps you coming back?  Is it my boisterous personality and verbosity?  Is it my self-deprecating sarcasm?  Is it my purple hair? 

Speak up, lovelies!  Whether you're coming at me through Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Typepad, an RSS feed or some other way, I'd like to know. 

Maybe you'll inspire my next post.  Maybe not.  Either way, I'd like to know who I'm talking to when I write. 

Just for a day.