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

 

 

You can be the outcast, or you can be the backlash of somebody's lack of love... or you can start speaking up.

NOTE: This post includes discussion of some pretty difficult subject matter, presented in an emotionally honest way. It may not be appropriate for all reading audiences.

At the heart of my myriad insecurities is a deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment. I am afraid that the people who profess to love me will stop caring, will decide that I am not worth their love and affection, and will dismiss me and my own emotions outright.

Physical abandonment is daunting enough, but it always seems to be symptomatic of a deeper emotional distance. DH left after our 19-year marriage crumbled, but that came only after he’d emotionally checked out of our relationship for years. I’d struggled to get Rango to engage in any emotionally significant way for more than a year before he told me he just wasn’t showing up for Max’s football game or my birthday. And when Bounder was most overwhelmed by the intensity of our relationship, he stood me up and distanced himself—at least until he decided he missed me too much to stay away—only to do it again and again.  

But the fear comes, plainly, from my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve written extensively about the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. There are at least six years during which I can remember being told, “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be the one to get in trouble.” Years later, when I did finally tell—in the aftermath of a date rape at 16—I was left to deal with the physical and emotional impact on my own. Both the molestation and the rape were acknowledged very calmly for a few days, but there was no significant follow-up. I wasn’t sent to a counselor or therapist. I was sent, by myself, for my first pelvic exam to make sure I didn’t contract an STD.

My fear and my shame were dismissed, were boxed away so that someone else could handle what happened to me. My emotions were treated as if they were secondary and unimportant—or at least it seemed that way to me. With the exception of one close friend who literally held my hand through the process of telling, I never once felt that I was supported or cared for in those days and weeks.

I was scared and sick and confused and alone. When I most needed to be loved, the person who should have loved me most left me alone in my horror, pretending then and for most of the years since that none of it happened.

So what I learned from an early age, and relearned over and over and over, was that when someone loves you, then they leave you when your emotions are too much for them.

They leave you when you are too much for them.

Because they can’t handle what they’re feeling in response to what you’re feeling, it’s easier to pretend the feelings don’t matter or that there are no feelings at all. So while love is supposed to be this caring, beautiful, wonderful thing, for me it’s also tainted by hurt, twisted up with rejection and carelessness and neglect.

None of this is new. None of this is revelation.

What is new for me is the realization that the subpersonalities are afraid that I will emotionally abandon them. They are terrified that I will decide that they aren’t worth the trouble, that the help they try to provide is too much of a hassle for me to bother to listen to them. They are afraid of being ignored and dismissed. They are afraid that I will shut them all down, in turn becoming exactly what I fear most.

And my choices, my culpability, in all of my relationship failures make my trustworthiness questionable. My complicity in DH’s ignorance of me, which I would go on to rebel against in the most damaging of ways possible. My constantly shifting boundaries, allowing Rango to pull further and further away while I accepted the blame for his distance. And my tortured love for Bounder, whose kiss could make time stand still and the seas turn to sand—who I will still seek out when I feel utterly lost and alone, even though I know he will almost certainly let me down. The multitude of others, who said I mattered but then walked away with barely a glance over their shoulders.

Besides, I was the one who was making out with that guy the night of the rape. I was the one whose tiny body reacted with sexual arousal when touched inappropriately. While that is a totally normal physiological response, the behavior that wasn’t normal became utterly normalized. I knew things at an age when I should’ve been happily playing with my baby dolls and getting hugs goodnight instead of confusion and lies to deflect someone else’s blame.

They won’t love me anymore if I don’t do this thing that feels weird and wrong, being done to me by someone who says they love me.

Hurt was normalized. Secrets and shame were normalized. Pretending like nothing happened, like it didn’t matter, was normalized.

So if I have culpability or complicity in those hurts, who the hell am I to be trusted? How can my internal family trust me to make healthy loving decisions for them when I can’t even seem to make them for myself? How can I be trusted to do the right thing for any of us?

The difference in me and those who’ve hurt me is that I don’t want to be distanced from my emotions or anyone else’s. I don’t want to be ignored or dismissed, and so I try like hell not to do the same to anyone else. To disregard those parts of myself, to act as if my own emotions just don’t exist or matter, inflicts unbearable hurt. Shutting down, being numb again, silencing those inner voices entirely is the last thing I ever want to do.

I have to show myself the love and care that I expect from anyone else.

Integration can only come about if I trust the parts not to hurt me and vice versa. I have to honor what each feels, acknowledge each emotion I am ultimately feeling, and accept that the emotion itself is not the trauma. The traumatic events are over and done; the feelings are ghosts whose chains rattle me in a million directions at once sometimes, making me shaky on my feet. Making me insecure.

I may be moving forward, but I’m not leaving them behind. These parts of me, trapped at different ages and stages of development—disintegrated—deserve the chance to mature. They deserve the opportunity to grown into the woman they would’ve become had shit not gone horribly wrong.

I deserve the same.

Part of that maturation is coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t allow those other people to hurt me. I didn’t encourage them to devalue me and to dehumanize me. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted. I didn’t ask for them not to love and care for me.

It wasn’t my fault.

IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

I am worth love, and I am worth care and concern. There is nothing about me that is so inherently ugly or unlovable to have warranted horrid, difficult abuse. I was a sweet, smart, precocious little girl with Moonpie eyes and one dimple. I should never have been a sexualized object. I didn’t deserve to be molested. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I didn’t deserve to be smacked around and degraded by an angry boyfriend. I didn't deserve to be used and abused and discarded.

I never deserved being the target of someone else’s self-loathing and guilt.

I was worth more than dismissal and ignorance because I didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or conform to their fucked-up, dysfunctional norms. I am worth more than an eyeroll-and-sigh in toleration.

All of those bits inside me have fought to protect me from hurt, from allowing anything in that might cause more damage, But the fracturing of my personality into smaller parts left vulnerable cracks. Rather than fill the spaces with gold, like Japanese kintsugi, I often used whatever I could find: leftover packing tape ripped from an old dusty box… someone else’s half-chewed gum… desperate hope coated in blood and sticky mess.

But I was never going to be able to close my own rifts with someone else’s effluvia.

It’s up to me to find the healing from deep inside me, to let those internal persona who so badly want and need to help do just that. If the end goal is a whole Stephanie, the parts that make her up have to have a role in filling those gaps.

So I’m letting them talk, and I’m listening. I’m hearing what each of them says they need, and I’m doing my best to honor those wishes. I’m giving each an opportunity to share their respective visions of wholeness and then choosing what works best for all of us. For me.

It is a process to pick up the broken pieces and put them back together. It took years for the breaks to happen, for the dust to settle enough for clean-up to begin. But it has.

And it’s up to me to do that work.

It’s up to me to show myself the love and care that I need, and that starts with sweeping away everyone else’s pain and destruction and refusing to force my bits to fit with theirs.

It’s up to me to trust that I can do this.  

 

 

With their guilt and shame, they think they're to blame for Candyman.

I spent a lot of the last week or so listening to a couple of podcasts about Internal Family Systems, about how and why the personality becomes segmented and how it’s possible to reconnect with each subpersonality and integrate the segments with a healthy Self. Look, I know from the outside it seems like a ludicrous idea of having a fragmented personality, with slivers of varying sizes and abilities vying for opportunity to help the person manage and live their life. But what I also know is that what I was doing wasn’t working well. Making the opportunity to listen to my emotions as they come up, to hear and feel without recrimination what each offer and to mindfully consider that specific point of view, has been eye opening.

I can be mercurial. I can move quickly from one emotion to another, be blissfully joyous in a moment and then respond in an extreme flash to come perceived hurt or threat. In the IFS model, that is one subpart responding and then another. Sometimes they not only battle the world around me, they battle with one another. But each has a job. Each has specific skills and methods to protect and help me, even though they’re not always as effective or healthy as would be best. Because their abilities are limited by only select experience and memory, none has a full range of tools at their disposal, but they do the best they can.

One thing that kept coming up this week was the idea of triggers. The word “trigger” itself can be met with an eyeroll or irritation at its overuse in recent years, especially in pop journalism and often in regard to social justice issues. But emotional and psychological triggers are a real thing. [I’m no psychologist or neurobiologist, and my explanations and understandings here come as a paraphrased interpretation of what I have been learning in regard to my own work.] As I understand it, experience is processed by the body and through the mind’s eye, imprinted on the brain and maintained in the prefrontal cortex, which is sometimes referred to as the “mammalian” part of the brain because it controls less instinctual functions. However, when there is trauma, the memory is imprinted in the amygdala, or the “reptilian” brain. This part engages during stressful moments, when protection becomes instinctual. That angry, extreme outburst during an argument, when you just can’t disengage from the emotion and scream and say terrible things you might not mean when you’re calm—that comes from the amygdala. The brain thinks we’re under attack and chooses fight over flight.

Triggers are created in the amygdala. When some later situation occurs that feels similar to those memories, fight-or-flight is engaged again. Not only does the perception in the moment seem like a very real threat, memories of previous, similar moments seem like additional threats. Anxiety and agitation, even fear and panic, can ensue, and we do what we can to protect ourselves from those threats. Again, maybe we are able to disengage and flee the moment. Often, people who have experienced trauma will fight, sometimes in ways that seem bizarre or non-sensical, both to others and to themselves. Unless there is healing of the trauma, the hurt can be triggered over and over. Without healing, the hurt is continually reinflicted—at least it seems that way to the brain—and the damage is deepened every time it’s reopened.

In the same way scars serve to protect a vulnerable space that has been damaged, the subparts of personality that are born of trauma act as protectors. In some ways, they are psychic scars, doing their best to heal a hurt and keep it from causing more pain, closing a wound to keep it from festering. But sometimes the scar tissue itself causes problems, sensitive from nerves that didn’t heal fully and pulling against healthy tissue painfully. When something in a moment triggers a traumatic memory, the subparts work to soothe the pain. They’ll twist and turn to pull the person away from hurt—like an emotional flinch—or they’ll engage it fully to stop the hurt from happening at all—swatting away an insect that is about to sting or bite. Born in the amygdala, the subpersonalities function instinctually, often without our conscious knowledge of how they work.

The goal of IFS, and currently my own therapeutic goal, is to identify and connect with each subpersonality, to understand its specific functions and motivations, and to teach it healthier ways to function, eventually allowing for an integrated, healthy Self. This is not the extremity of The United State of Tara or Sybil. There may be days in which it seems like I’m living The Three Faces of Stephanie, but I don’t have a dozen extreme personalities trapped inside me, fighting to get out. Not like that.

But taking the time to listen for them and hear what they say, breathing through an emotion or moment of extreme thought and examining how that connects to my Self, has been both wonderful and emotionally draining. I’ve been able to be less reactionary to some pretty difficult situations. I’ve reined in anger and avoided unnecessary outburst. I handled some particularly stressful engagements with some exes quite calmly and healthfully.

I also spoke about my molestation this week, verbalizing and articulating the logistics of my sexual abuse in ways I never have. It took 40 years for me to feel safe enough to say out loud specifically what had happened (at least in part). It was frightening, conjuring those memories into my present, feeling like adult Stephanie was watching them happen while simultaneously feeling what Cissie felt in those moments. I am incredibly thankful to have an amazing therapist who I (we) trust enough to ask her to help me with those feelings.

That night, I remembered a dream I had when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4. I’ve always remembered the dream, a nightmare that terrified me. Because of that dream, I fell asleep with the lights on until I was a teenager. I still tend to sleep with my blankets drawn tightly up around my neck because of it. While it would sound innocuous and maybe even silly to describe it now, I realized it was taken from what was happening around me while I was being molested. It was the distraction from what was happening, and my tiny, young subconscious turned it into a nightmare that haunted me for a decade.

There was no sudden healing that came with this realization. But there was connection with that part. There was understanding that allowed me to connect with Cissie, who was the target of the earliest trauma. To understand her is to show her that I can be trusted, that I will protect her and love her, no matter what, that I am a capable adult who can handle it for all of us. She doesn’t have to be left in the care of teenaged babysitters with their limited knowledge and capabilities.

I have spent years in a constant state of fight-or-flight, hypersensitive to perceived threat. Sometimes those perceptions have been wrong, and I have misinterpreted experience through the filters of my own agitation. Sometimes the voices of those subparts have chattered and whispered chaotically, warning me of what they see, and I have accepted their perceptions as truth. They’re not always wrong. They are, however, always singular and myopic in what they can see from their standpoint in the past.

There will be people who feel discomfited reading this. My words will make some people uncomfortable. At times, they make me uncomfortable. But the secrecy and shame that came with sexual trauma should never have been mine. Cissie should never have felt afraid and ashamed by what was done to her, without her consent and without her love. Stephie and Quinn should never have felt the need to protect her. While I have created a façade of transformation over the last seven years, there has still been a constant turmoil inside of me. The discomfort of a reader can never compare to the discomfort I have felt inside for my entire life.

I will not hide behind someone else’s shame again.

 

 

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.

 

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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

You shout it out, but I can't hear a word you say.

When I started writing Muchness and Light in late 2010, DH was not happy.  I'd been toying with an old writing project, which later morphed into Persona Non Grata, and I'd been thinking for days about starting a blog.  I wanted a different outlet to hone skill and craft.  I was also in the beginnings of what would become this huge shift in how I saw myself and my place in my world. 

Initially, he was hurt and irritated that I hadn't consulted him about it.  It wasn't that I wanted to write, he argued, but that he could've helped me choose the blogging platform and the technology that would be best for my project.  I hadn't needed his help, though.  I was perfectly capable of researching these things and deciding what would work best for me. 

For a while, I didn't readily share my writing with him.  He would grumble when I did a new piece, seemingly irritated both at what I had to say and that I was saying it at all.  Yes, it diverted time and attention away from him and the children and whatever else I'd normally been doing for two hours on any given morning.  To delay the laundry or the dishes, to allow myself a little time to get inside my own head and see how it worked, was certainly giving my psyche a chance to flex muscles it hadn't used in about ten years. 

I was thinking for myself again.  I was doing for myself again.  I was still handling everything logistically in our world, but I was changing.

DH was not happy.

In hindsight, our marital problems were really amping up.  Of course I knew there were issues—that was part of the reason I was so unhappy.  It was very difficult to mend or even maintain our relationship, especially given the enormous change I was experiencing. 

Through all of the volatility, I wrote. 

As our marriage spiraled out of control, we would fight in the guise of trying to repair our damage.  Night after night of emotionally and verbally violent arguments, a constant battering of each other, trying our best to both attack each other and defend our positions.  Sometimes I would just sit and take it, letting him yell at me as punishment for the choices I'd made that had flown in the face of our marriage.  Sometimes I would yell back, vehemently reminding him of all the ways he had failed me and us, as well.  Sometimes when he was especially brutal, I would do my best to disengage and walk away until we were both calmer and more reasonable. 

DH never liked it when I disengaged.  It infuriated him that I would step out of his line of fire and walk away.  That was often when his words would become knives thrown straight at my heart. 

Late one night, when it was apparent that he'd worn me down to the point of just taking it, I realized there was no reasoning with him.  I was tired of being told I was wrong and said something about going inside to write for a while.

"Your writing is a joke!" he laughed derisively.  "No one gives a fuck about what you have to say!  Your blog is just your fucking diary about shit no one but you and your friends care about it.  You should shut the fuck up while you still have a shred of dignity!"

Make no mistake that it stung like hell.  After twenty years together, he knew how to cut me to the core.  I questioned my writing, my motivations, my talent, and my voice.  Since that incident over two years ago, I have heard those words in my head every single time I have been unsure of this path. 

I could tell myself that what I had to say mattered.  Sure, it matters to me.  It matters to my friends.  I have collected a small but loyal readership of people I've never met and never hear from, but I see the web traffic and get occasional messages from random people telling me that something I wrote touched them. 

I still questioned it all the time. 

Recently I started writing guest posts for DivorcedMoms.com.  Given what I know about being both divorced and being a mom, it seemed like a natural extension of what I do here.  Plus it would be an additional outlet to tackle some issues and say some things I might not want to constantly float on Muchness and Light.  (This is not a divorce blog, after all.)

I submitted my second piece, "8 Things Every Divorced Woman Should Do NOW!" a couple of weeks ago, as part of a suggested assignment on their contributor site.  I was thrilled when they not only ran the piece but also featured it that week in their newsletter and on their splash page.  I saw the link to the article tweeted and retweeted by the editors. 

Someone else was interested in what I had to say. 

Two days ago, I received an email from one of the DivorcedMoms.com editors. 

Hi Stephanie,

We are thrilled to tell you that your article is featured on mariashriver.com 

http://mariashriver.com/blog/2014/03/8-things-every-woman-should-do-for-herself-stephqj/

It a great article and we are so happy to see it profiled.  We love your writing, keep the posts coming:)

What?!?

And there it was.  Maria Shriver's site had picked up my article and reposted it.  There was a link back to DivorcedMoms and to my writer profile there.  She (or her social media person) had tweeted the link, which was retweeted repeatedly by strangers.  It was on her Facebook page, with comments from women I'd never known saying how much they enjoyed it, how it mattered to them. 

After the obligatory squealing and dancing and texting and calls to almost everyone I knew, I forwarded the email to my therapist. 

Someone else wanted to hear what I had to say. DH was wrong. I shouldn't have shut up and been quiet.

And I started to cry.  As I've admitted before, I sometimes cry when I write.  I'll hit some place of emotional truth, and the tears flow cathartically as the tension is released.  (Hell, I'm crying as I write this now.)

It wasn't so much confirmation that DH was wrong; it was verification that I wasn't.  My voice mattered to someone else, to someone other than me, and it had value even if only for a moment. 

I was right to write again.  I was right to question my life, then and now, and to work through my issues in the public forum I'd chosen all by myself.  I was right to believe that my words held strength and worth and truth outside my own busy, complicated head. 

I don't know what path I'd be on had I not chosen this one.  In the end it doesn't matter, because this is where I am.  It may not be right for anyone else.  It may not have been right for DH.  But it is exactly where I am supposed to be.

 

And then you call me, and it's not so bad.

This morning, about an hour before I was scheduled to sign copies of Persona Non Grata at the AJC Decatur Book Festival, I was in an utter panic.  The festival had been open about an hour, and not one copy of PNG had sold.  Everywhere I looked, I saw older women and hipster, urban couples with their jogging strollers—not my demographic. 

 

 Queen Frostine texted me just then:

Good luck today.  *hug*

I'm in a panic

No worries.  This will be brilliant.

No.  It'll be sad.  No one will buy it and I'll sit there for 10 minutes doing nothing.  That's how I expect it to go.

I don't want to do it.

She called me immediately.  I was on the verge of tears, pacing an alley behind the courthouse.  She reminded me that I could do this, that the worst thing that happened was no one came and I just sat there for ten minutes.  It wouldn't be the end of the world. 

Hot Pocket and Growler chimed in via Facebook Messenger. 

Me:        I just hung up with Frostine.  In utter panic about this and don't want to do it.  I will but am flaking out.

HP:        What, the signing?  Your book is awesome!  You can do this!

              You are glittery goodness and not a wallflower.

              Tell people about your book, like you would tell me. 

G:          Sass.  You will be fine.  I have made it through DAYS of book signings selling next to nothing and paying for my space.  You can do it for minutes.

              I panic, too.  All writers do.  You are not special.

I sucked it up, checked in at the Emerging Writers Pavilion, and then went and took my seat.  I was immediately joined by another writer.  She was tiny (at least compared to me), with short, dark hair that curled into a deep purple flame above her forehead.  Nose ring and skull-and-crossbones earrings.  Exactly the kind of woman I would like to hang out with under any circumstances. 

She introduced herself, and we started talking about what we write.  I must confess that I probably hogged way too much of the conversation.  But this writer, I. R. Harris, told me to remember what I had written and why, that my voice is able to reach women who often feel left out of contemporary fiction. 

"Besides, you wrote a book!  Lots of people say that want to do it and never do.  You did this!"

Then a friend from Facebook came up to the table.  I'd never met him (nor his lovely wife) face-to-face.  He was there to see me and get a signed copy. 

All of this was exactly what I needed today. 

There were a dozen little signs throughout the day that helped to cement some choices I had to make about the next couple of months.  It still means a lot of work is directly in front of me, but it also tells me that I know which path to forge and to trust in that. 

I received unexpected wisdom and encouragement from friends and strangers when I needed it most.  When there are impossibly difficult moments and I want to just crawl in bed and never come out, there is always something that is put in front of me, to remind me again of not only who I'm supposed to be but who I am.  Even when this life is at its hardest, I am thankful to have been given the strength and opportunity to live it as fully as I am willing and able.  I am fortunate and appreciative, even when I'm scared to death and so afraid that I will fail again or look like a fool. 

So for every little bit of goodness that was granted to me today, thank you.  I am humbled by the lessons I have learned and the serendipity that is a regular part of my crazy life.

I am a lucky, lucky girl.

 

Someday when my crying is done, I'm gonna wear a smile and walk in the sun.

For months I've been toying with what to write next. 

I always knew I wanted to do something else from the Junkture stories.  I went to Mardi gras and Mobile earlier this year to do research for the next book, Mantissa.  (That's Alex Wheeler's first wife's backstory, if you're interested.  If you don't know who I'm talking about, read my first novel Persona Non Grata.)  Most of it would be totally fiction with bits and pieces of my youth and stories from friends' lives as well. 

There's also the story of Talia Wheeler, Alex's current wife.  Sequentially it happens just after Persona Non Grata but is told from Talia's point of view.  I knew a lot of it would reflect my real life in the aftermath of separation and the process of divorce.  I haven't had enough closure or distance to be able to delve into it quite yet.

I had a dream in the spring that was the catalyst for an entirely new story.  The details were swirling in my head, and I did hours and hours of research.  While utterly fiction and having nothing to do with Junkture, the tempest that is Sass and Bounder was strongly influencing how these characters were evolving.  This was true the first time we were together and even moreso the second time. 

I was stuck, though.  I couldn't quite see these new characters.  Queen Frostine was asking me regularly where this book was—she knew the gist of the story and wanted to see it come to fruition.  Even Hammer was intrigued by the idea. 

"It's all in my head," I would answer.

When Bounder and I broke up in July, I was on my way to Mobile again.  I needed time to think and wrap my head around what was happening.  The day after it finally happened, I drove out to Dauphin Island.  I sat on a mostly-deserted beach in the rain, listened to music, and cried.  I purged a lot of emotion that day, giving it to the wind and the rain and the withdrawing tide. 

And somehow over that tempest, I heard the names of the new characters.  Layla and Michael. 

From that point, they had identities.  I could hear and see them, knew how they acted and moved.  I borrowed Lady Hammer's laptop and wrote what would become the first draft of the first chapter on Sunday.  It took a few days, but I eventually got into the groove and the energy needed to write this story.

Like all writers do, I'm writing what I know.  Even though the story itself borders on paranormal romance (but is as about as genre-specific as PNG—which is to say, not at all), the emotions of Michael and Layla are effectively Bounder and me.  Like I did for the first book, and like I do for Muchness and Light, I am drawing upon my very real life to drive my writing. 

But just once I would like to not have to live a traumatic relationship just to get a book out of me. 

"Most women gain twenty-five pounds when they break up," my editor said.  "I'd say emotional writing is much more productive."

I agree, but it's hard to relive the good and the bad just to reframe the sense of emotion.  It's hard to see the texts and emails and then remember what was occurring in the midst of that.  It's as difficult to the middle-of-the-night "I miss and love you" messages as it is to see the "This is too hard, I don't think I can do it" ones.  It breaks my heart all over again to see all the times we were messaging simultaneously that we were listening to the same song, or to see when he'd text me that he was on his way to come and kiss his girl. 

In some ways, it leaves me even more confused about what happened.  He was there, plainly and constantly, and then suddenly not.  I knew when and why I think it happened, but I don't know how.  It seems like there was literally one moment in time when something shifted and everything fell apart.  If I mapped it out on a storyline, I can see the day that's pinpointed as the climactic turning point.  But there are still details I'm missing. 

I have to accept that I may never have that insight.  Writing Original Sin is kind of my way of making sense of it all, though our specifics are differently complicated than Michael and Layla's.  I get to build the monument to this as I see fit. 

"This is what your lightning strike was for," Hot Pocket said. 

She's probably right.  And I will take the lessons I learned from writing Persona Non Grata—step out of chronology, limit the emotional punch, break down the specifics to only what you need—and write this story as best I can.  The energy for it is abundant right now, and I'm let it flow openly and unabashedly.  If it's anything like my actual relationship with Bounder, it will come quickly and then be gone, leaving something entirely new in its wake. 

Well I know you will remember, 'cause the music is forever.

It's been a really busy year for me. 

• I finished losing 115 pounds.
• I had three surgeries to removed 120+ square inches of skin.
• I went to South by Southwest for the first time.
• I got to see both my beloved The Gracious Few and LIVE with their new lead singer on the same night.  (Plus some other band.  I forget.)
• I fell in love with the Mynabirds.  (Missing Patsy Cline song – "We Made a Mountain")
• I finally got to see the Afghan Whigs live and to meet Greg Dulli in a dark alley behind the Masquerade.  (And Ric McCollum and John Curley.)
• I filed for divorce.
• I released my first novel. 

Even with all of that, there's still something missing.

Wednesday night, I will finally get to see Concrete Blonde live. 

"What's the big deal?" you ask. 

Well, let me tell you. 

Sometime during my freshman year of high school, I went one weekend afternoon to the Southside Festival, which was a great little outdoor music and arts thing that used to take place in Five Points South in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.  Five Points is a funky little area, artsy and eclectic—and it was much less dirty then than it is now.  (At least it seemed that way.)  My friends and I hung out there on weekends and sometimes after school, sitting around the fountain, bullshitting and getting into far less trouble than we probably deserved. 

So this specific day when I was 14, some record label promo people were passing out albums to the crowd.  Yes, vinyl, in the 12x12 sleeve, and for free.  They handed me two: Pleased To Meet Me by the Replacements—who I saw play at Sloss Furnaces a couple of years later—and Concrete Blonde's self-titled debut.  I tromped up the rickety stairs to Charlemagne Records and also bought a Billie Holiday best-of collection, as well as Metal Circus by Hüsker Dü. 

(It was a very eclectic day.  For those in the know, I ran into Broderick Brakefield and Bryan Simmons, who'd missed their ride the night before and had been running around down there, barefoot, for a couple of days.)

I went home and locked myself away in my bedroom, planting myself on the floor in front my stereo.  I might even have stacked the records on the turntable.  I loved them all, each in their own way, but I adored Concrete Blonde. 

It was the first day of a now-26-year love affair from afar with the incomparable Johnette Napolitano. 

As I've discussed before, I'm an alto.  (Really, a contralto.)  I don't have a lot of patience for wimpy soprano voices.  And Johnette's voice was the farthest from wimpy I'd ever heard.  It was deeply female with the most amazing breath control ever.  Ever.  (Those booming notes aren't higher; they're simply bigger.) 

I was blown away.

So this goes on for years, but somehow I miss them live, over and over and over.  I was too young for the clubs they played.  My ex-boyfriend was an asshole who beat me up the night before we were supposed to go to Atlanta to see them.  I lived in Huntsville where they never played anymore.  They broke up. 

I was supposed to see them two summers ago during their Bloodletting anniversary tour.  I had ruptured two discs in my back and was in so much pain that I had to give the tickets away.  (I cried.  A lot.)

So when I went to Variety Playhouse with Growler and Mandypants a few weeks ago (for the Psychedelic Furs, thank you very much), I was thrilled to see that Concrete Blonde would be playing on December 19^th.  Finally, finally!, I get to do this shit after twenty-six years. 

It's the voice and the lyrics and the fact that she plays bass.  She does the most wonderful covers of Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, in part because her voice lends itself to that.  But my favorites, undoubtedly, are the ones with the complicated harmonies, where Johnette seems to wrap her own voice around itself. 

And, ultimately, I owe Johnette Napolitano my life. 

There are a couple of people who know this story.  If you're one of them and you're hearing (reading) it for the dozenth time, I apologize.  This anecdote was in the first draft of what would become Persona Non Grata: A Story of Junkture.  It was cut entirely when I fictionalized the book, though Concrete Blonde still made mention.  (page 81, at the end of chapter 6—you can search inside the book on Amazon, btw) 

NOTE:  This is still incredibly difficult for me to go back to, to put myself in the place where I felt the things I write about below.  I can deal with a lot of my shit, but this is one of the most personally-shameful moments of emotion in my forty years, and I'm not callous about this. 

The horrible ex-boyfriend (Damien) and I had broken up for what would be the last time.  After four tumultuous years with him, I was a mess.  I was devastated when we broke up.  For the third or fourth time since I'd known him, I decided that ending my life was the only way I would ever be able to deal with the pain. 

I had a plan.  I had the implements.  I was crying vicious tears while driving on I-65 north in Birmingham, determined to do it as soon as possible.  My little car had a cassette deck, and my very favorite tape was a home-recorded, 90-minute thing that had Concrete Blonde on one side and Bloodletting on the other—my two favorite Concrete Blonde records.  Bawling my head off, I intended to listen to "Bloodletting" and all of the subsequent tracks from that records, all so dark and somber.  It's an amazing record, but all I wanted was to let my own heart find its reprieve in that sadness. 

Instead, what I got was "True", the first track from the other side of the tape. 

Well when I've had enough

I'll get a pick-up truck and I'll drive away,

I'll take my last ten bucks just as far as it will go.

 

Well sometimes I'm easily fooled,

Take a painful step and I get knocked back two.

I do all I can and it's all I can do to be true.

And if I had the choice I'd take the voice I got

Cause it was hard to find.

You know I've come too far to wind up right back where I started.

And they tell me who I should be,

I'll never let those monkeys make a mess of me.

I am who I am and it's all I can do,

But I'm true.

One more sunrise

Open my eyes up – true

One more sunset

Lay my head down – true

They talk you up and then they talk you down

And you begin to doubt.

Sometimes the reasons seem so very far away.

But I'd stop breathing today,

Cause if I can't walk proud, I'd rather walk away.

I do all I am and it's all I can do,

But I'm true.

I'd give all I am and I'd give it to you.

So true.

That was what I heard, instead of a song of a crack in the mirror and a bloodstain on the bed, about being turned into the walking dead. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" I screamed into the otherwise-empty car tearfully. 

I went home instead.

So every time I get really down, feel really lost and can't find my inner compass, that's where I go back, to that piece of time (still so fresh inside my mind) and remember that moment of pause that saved my life. 

Was it really Johnette Napolitano that saved my life?  Not directly.  But I don't know that I would've been listening to anything else, or that I could've heard anyone else quite so clearly that late afternoon.  But I did hear it, thankfully.

So now, twenty-six years into this love affair, her music is still so often the soundtrack of my life.  And of Tierney's.  Six Concrete Blonde songs were included in my playlists.  All of my friends know how much I love her.  Half of them love her, too, because I introduced them. 

Tickets for Concrete Blonde at Variety Playhouse are still available.  Wednesday, December 19^th, at 8:00 p.m.  I'll be the first show for me and Growler, as well as for Tierney.  Come say hi.  I'll be the glittery Amazon belting out every last song. 

Shut your dirty, dirty mouth.

Like most people, I've had a lot of teachers in my life.  Two, in particular, really stand out in my mind.

The first one I'll discuss, who actually came second into my educational life, was a philosophy professor at UAH.  Craig Hanks.  On the advice of a friend, I took his Ethics class.  I learned a lot—even though I didn't always do the work.  When it came time to do a presentation on an ethical dilemma, somehow I thought it was a good idea to do a paper on the ethics of S&M lifestyle, given that S&M was (is?) still categorized as a mental illness in the DSM-R.  Ultimately I read the paper to the class... but only because he wouldn't let me present the video montage I felt best illustrated my position.  (Innuendo not intentional, though it makes me laugh.)

Honestly, Craig Hanks was just sexy.  There was no getting around it.  He was only a little older than his students, articulate and gently-spoken even when excited.  And he had these piercing eyes that looked straight into your soul the entire time he spoke with you.  It was unnerving but completely riveting.  More impressive, though, was his hair.  Long, dark curls that were always pulled back into a ponytail, until the last day of class when he would unleash them.  I think he had to know that his students—both male and female, alike—would be distracted by that gorgeous hair.  With those eyes and that hair, he looked like Eddie Vedder and Chris Isaak's love child, in the absolute best way possible. 

Before him, though, there was a teacher in high school, Jean Burnett.  I had Mrs. Burnett for 10^th-grade English Literature, then again the next year for AP Lit.  I also had her for two years for Creative Writing.  I was the assistant editor my junior year, and editor my senior, of the school's literary magazine, Counterpane. 

It was a collection of student-produced poems and short stories and drawings and photographs.  At the time, we all thought it was great.  I can remember being so pleased at how many students we'd gotten to contribute that last year, how I'd actually left the next year's editor with money in the account to start the year.  I had a dozen or so poems as a senior—and not just because I was the editor. 

Now, of course, when I go back and read it, it's mostly bad teen angst and convoluted ramblings.  (I know this surprises you.)  I can remember many mornings in first period with Mrs. Burnett (assuming that I hadn't skipped class), sharing pieces for potential inclusion in that year's edition of Counterpane.  She was always very patient, politely stressing the use of constructive critique.  She was incredibly adept at steering heated discussions about whether or not So-and-so's poem was crap.

Originally I had intended two release two versions of Persona Non Grata simultaneously: one that was sexual but tame, and the other that was fully pornographic. 

"Look," Absolem said to me, "women love sex and women love music.  If you write the book where they get to bang the rock star, you'll sell a million copies."

When it came time to revise again and begin the sexualization of the story, I had to write the porn first, intending to go back and cull the tamer version from the graphic one.  As I sent drafts to the inner circle, even the prudest of my readers said the sex was cogent: 

"All the sex, surprisingly, was good for me!  I feel like that gets across even more clearly the emotional states of the characters, no veil, nothing hidden.  It's just all there, all laid out.  I think you will get your characters' thought process out there better with all the explicit stuff.  Nothing held back.  Yes, the sex was exciting to read, which makes it better for the reader!"

"I blush easily, but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it just the same."

"Hot damn!"

Their feedback was good, but I still questioned whether or not it was too much. 

And then, I heard Jean Burnett's voice in my head, twenty-five years later, asking me whether or not it was gratuitous. 

"Does this make sense for these characters?  Does it fit this story?" I heard her ask patiently. 

Yes, it does.

So the sex is there, but this is not a sex book.  This is not erotica.  (I know.  I've written plenty of that and will likely do it again for another Junkture book.)  But this is a story about a grown woman who is in love with two men, married to one and having a torrid affair with the other.  She is awakening in her life and rediscovering her body.  Sex is integral to her process of transformation. 

I went back to erotic works I loved: Anne Rice's Belinda and Exit to Eden.  Both books are full of beautiful passages and descriptions non-traditional sex, but those acts are part of larger love stories.  That was what I wanted to do. 

I looked at what Anais Nin and Pauline Reage had done, though the English translations could never do their works justice.  I looked at Fifty Shades of Grey and knew Tierney would never use a phrase like "his considerable length".  (And I still argue that Anne Rice's Sleeping beauty trilogy is the seminal work of love in the guise of S&M.  Fuck E. L. James.)

So Tierney and I embraced her bawdy potty mouth and went for it.  As one of the readers said, "Tierney would totally say cock and pussy.  It's just who she is." 

"Does this make sense for these characters?  Does it fit this story?" 

Yes, it does.

Persona Non Grata: A Story of Junkture is graphic.  It is steamy and sometimes raunchy in ways that are exploratory for the adults in this story.  They're wiser and more adventurous than any 20-year-old would be, and they are comfortable in their explorations.  And those are exactly the kind of readers I hope will read this book.

For all of those reasons, Jean Burnett is the dedication for my first novel.  I always said the first one would be for her, and there's no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice.  I had the distinct pleasure a couple of weeks ago of speaking with her by phone and thanking her for her guidance and influence, even all these years later.  I sent her a signed copy of the book, giving her fair warning of the content, and I hope to hear from her soon with her own constructive critique. 

I promise not to drop an f-bomb when I talk to her again, even if it does fit my character. 

And if anyone talks to Craig Hanks, let him know I have a signed copy for him, too.