Muchness and Light

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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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.

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She's super-freaky, yow.

I am deviant. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am a deviant subculture unto myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

From Wikipedia:

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

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

Demeanor

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

Use of Space

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

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

Staring, Smiling, and Touching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Someone another that's as sweet as your mother.

During one of the last face-to-face conversations I had with Bounder, he made the comment that women's expectations of men are—and should be—set by their fathers.  He gave me that knowing look, urging me to think about how that has played out in my relationships and how it continues to influence my expectations of men. 

I wrote a lot about my relationship with my mom in Persona Non Grata.  I did touch on my dad to some degree.  This is a topic that even my therapist and I have veered around for the most part, having spent so much time and energy on stabilizing and rectifying other issues.  While it's definitely something for me to explore—and I'm sure I will—I'm not quite ready to go there yet, at least not publicly. 

What Bounder's statement did set me to thinking about, though, was the reverse, specifically the role of the mother in setting up male expectations of women and how that will play out for my children.  Based on who I am, on the behavior they've seen modeled in me, what kind of women will my sons be drawn to?

Max is almost 13, and Tricky just turned 9.  They aren't even that interested in girls yet.  (Thankfully.)  Max is still at the stage where he denies any and all attraction to the opposite sex, while confidently asserting his inherent heterosexuality.  Tricky is past the point of playing with girls at recess.  Both have female friends.

They've both been long drawn to the tall, leggy girls.  Usually blondes.  Duh.

As they get older, I'll be unsurprised to see them dating busty, blond Amazons.  I'll be perfectly okay if one of them brings home a girl with purple hair or tattoo.  Facial piercings are generally okay, too.

I fully expect their female companions to be loud and a little bossy, neurotic and temperamental.  Maybe even quirky.  Knowing how the boys interact with me now, they'll be attracted to smart, funny, thoughtful women who can carry on a conversation and get a complicated, inside joke. 

Their loves may be prone to crying for no apparent reason.  They may yell when they get mad, then turn quiet and withdrawn when they're truly angry.  They may be sensitive and sentimental. 

What I hope most, though, is that the women they choose are strong and willing to share their voices, that they're able to speak up and stand up for themselves in the face of adversity—even if and when it is coming from one of my stubborn sons. 

I hope my sons have learned to look for women who can appreciate them for the myriad beauty they possess, who can openly love them and share their hearts as easily as they may share their bodies, when the time comes.  I hope for women who can apologize and try not to make the same mistakes again and again, who can tell my sons that they're being pig-headed asses just as easily as they can tell them they're sweet and that they love them anyway.

And if I don't like a girl my son likes?  Make no mistake: I will tell them.  I will also expect my children to make their own choices, even if it's not what I would choose for them at all.  That's what I have done, and that's how I have tried my best to raise them.

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Teach your children what you believe in.

I know they're watching, they're watching.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I'm often ignored by men when I go out, perhaps because I'm a bit intimidating.  It was hard for me to understand, even fully aware of my Amazonian brashness. 

The last couple of weeks, I've had some really profound experiences, where I fell back on my grown-ass-womanness and went out, either by myself or with the girls.  It turned out that not all men (or women) were so quick to ignore me. 

It started with a weekend of intense (if private) exploration of the kind I love the most, where I'm able to really delve into whatever has attracted me and seek that deep understanding I so love.  I went out by myself and found that not only was I capable of doing it, I was readily able to find enjoyment in that selfness.  I was utterly in control of my head, my heart, my body, and my choices—and I was quite content in that. 

The Girls

The girls—Hot Pocket, Growler, and Boogie Shoes—came into town this past weekend for what we cheekily named Stripper Weekend. 

Originally, we'd planned to strip wallpaper at my house—with steamers, scrapers, scorers, and the like—though Hot Pocket jokingly suggested we hire some hot, male strippers (or Cupid37) to do it while we watched.  We also talked of going to the Clermont Lounge for disco funk dancing on Saturday night. 

In the end, we saw no actual strippers, though we did get to see a shirtless guy while another guy took his shoe off just for us.  (That was Yahtzee, who was very sweet and brave to play along with the crazy of the inner circle.)  We also laughed and squealed and danced our damn asses off all weekend.   We never stripped a piece of wallpaper, nor did we get to the Clermont.  We did, however, hit Metalsome Live Metal Karaoke, The Basement Theatre, and Johnny's Hideaway. 

I was by no means the only one, but I got a lot of attention this weekend.  Really, almost more than I could stand.  Men and women looked, smiled, talked, asked me to dance or meet their friend, and asked if they could come home with me.  (Don't stare.  Flash the dimple.  Hi, I'm Stephanie.  Dance again already?  No, thank you, I'm with my girls.  No, you may not.)  I got lots of sweet and not-so-subtle compliments, which also meant I gave out my plastic surgeon's name to about a dozen women. 

I even had the never-before-happened experience of a guy picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder, all caveman style.  He's a 30-year-old personal trainer, who I promptly named Cavey, Jr., after Captain Caveman's son. 

I didn't even let DH carry me across the threshold when we got married, because I was so self-conscious about my body and my weight.  Even now, after the weight loss and the surgeries, I am no small thing.  No man has EVER picked me up.

Sass and Cavey, Jr.

Cavey, Jr. was sweet and adorable and very, very cute.  He stayed with our loud, bawdy group all night, even though he knew I had no intention of taking him home.  He asked me repeatedly how I got to be so adorable.  He sang while he danced with me on the crowded floor, all Johnny and Baby style. 

Between the mirrors in the clubs and the pictures on my friends' phones, I could see what other people see.  I could see how my hair and face and body come together now, reflected back in someone else's eyes.  I could really see how my body moved, with its new, flat stomach and surgically-enhanced breasts and the long, strong legs so often encased in the boots I bought myself when I lost 100 pounds. 

I was told many times that I was pretty or hot or beautiful or sexy.  What I could finally understand from an outside perspective, though, was the strength and the confidence in how and where and when it all moved, even when I klutzily elbowed a guy in the jaw or tripped over my own huge feet.  (I can't even begin to explain how I accidentally kicked a guy in the side of the head.)  It didn't matter that I utterly sucked at karaoke—I totally owned what I was doing. 

 

Maybe that is what's both intriguing and intimidating to others, my ability to be me—fearlessly and unapologetically and openly.  I know where I've been and where I am now, with no real idea of where I'm going.  I know who I was and who I am now, and I know who I will continue to strive to be, understanding that it could shift and change as the circumstances of my life unfold. 

In every single mirror and photograph, what I saw looking back every single time was simply Stephanie.

Now I get it. 

At Johnny's Hideaway

Is there a better life for me?

In the past few weeks and months, as in the past few years, I've lived an extraordinary series of mostly-unrelated events.  They've been varied and crazy, giving rise to a whole new batch of Stephanecdotes, as well as providing some serious fodder for each of a few planned new books.  Sometimes they were things I sought—Mardi Gras with Hammer and Lady Hammer and Glee and Roadkill—as research for a new project.  Sometimes they were utterly random—the dozen balloons floating colorfully into the rising sun over Atlanta.  And sometimes they were fated—like a lightning bolt straight to the ass.

Fate can be a fickle little bitch.

As I wrote both here and in Persona Non Grata:

I'm a firm believer in Fate.  Some things are fated in the sense that there's only one viable choice, based on all of the previous choices you've made.  There's nowhere else to go but here, because you've come from there, and that makes it feel important.  But I also believe in Fate as an outside, blinding force.  Maybe it's because of other people's choices, maybe it's sheer dumb luck, but it feels like divine intervention, twisting and turning you wildly or slightly.  Either way, you can't help but look at what it wants you to see. 

I'm adamant that Fate is what brought me to so many watershed moments in my life, as in Tierney's.  My forty years have been significant and stellar, even when splattered with the remnants of my heart.  She hasn't stopped working her magic, or so I'd thought.  Then I was given a series of gifts, only some of which I was able (read: allowed) to keep for any significant length of time.  But I did and am continuing to do my best to take those simple lessons learned and move forward. 

So what now?

In the aftermath of several recent events, I was shocked to realize that I'm really, really scared to move forward again.  While I do actually have a choice in the matter, I refuse to be still any longer than necessary.  It's just not who I am.  But in my search for a deeper, more profound experience in which to immerse myself and fully comprehend, I am in a cycle of seeking out more varied experiences, in search of my next rabbit hole.  Given the things I've done and the people I've known, how the hell am I ever going to top this?

It's not that there's a competition, with myself or anyone else.  I don't feel especially driven to do more things.  Those actions and events are simply a delivery vehicle for experience and understanding—a mode of enveloping me in deeper learning and the psychic tinkering I so love. 

Some of these things I've lived, especially in the last three years, have left me with my bars set very high—the problem being that someone else placed them way over my head, just out of my reach.  And for an Amazon, that's pretty damn high.  Unfortunately, I have no control over where those bars rest. 

After the events of even my year so far, I feel taunted by what I want, that it was and sometimes is so damn close.  But when I reach for it, it falls away like sand.  Over and over, I'm in someone else's sandbox, but it's warm and velvety and strangely soothing, so I keep digging deeper. 

Okay, Fate: challenge me.  Dare me.  Give me reason and excuse to reach again, to reach for something bigger and better, something truer and more astonishing.  Because I know there's something there for me to learn, something important and pressing and profound, I will all but destroy myself to get to that locus, to that kernel of truth at the center.  It's something that's just for me, and sometimes I have to step into the journey through Hell to gain it. 

Even in my brashness, I am fearful that I will never again reach those same heights and depths of learning and love and sex and hope, that I have somehow stumbled upon something (and someone) so exquisitely good that any future attempts will, at the very least, fall short of those expectations.  The worst case scenario is that even trying to match that will be cataclysmic to my heart and soul, if only because it's doomed to be a fruitless effort.  While I know the real joy should be in the journey and not the destination, the last thing I want for the last half of my life is boredom and unfulfilment. 

"Maybe the point is to be happy and content in what you do have, to enjoy the person you're actually with as fully as possible," Queen Frostine advised.  "Maybe that's your ultimate goal."

That feels like settling, though, and I don't ever want to do that again.  As selfish and strong-willed as I am, I will actually compromise when the need arises.  I am very good at negotiating settlement, in general, though that's rarely so successful with my heart.  While my ideal isn't perfection, what if my idyllic can only ever fall short of faded and dreamy memory?

I knew what I wanted; I seemed to have it within my careful grasp.  Not as an object or a trophy, but as a treasure that was tarnished and neglected and buried under so damn much rubble, trying desperately to breathe under the crush of years.  But it slipped back into the sand and seems to be washing out with the tide.  So now I have to walk the shoreline again, combing through seaweed and jellyfish and craggy, broken shells, hoping to find another pearl yet afraid all I'll have are slimy oysters. 

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Where to find Persona Non Grata: A Story of Junkture

Love me or leave me. Just take it or leave it.

How do you define yourself?

I am the Glamazon—the six-foot blonde (okay, 5'11) with a surgically-enhanced body who loves to sparkle in heels and shiny lip gloss.  I am the Glitter Slug, who leaves a slow trail of spangles behind her wherever she goes.  Several times lately I've made reference to myself with a very colorful, publicly-inappropriate characterization that includes the words "batshit" and "beast".

Growler called me out on it, to listen carefully to what I was saying about myself, both to others and to me. 

"Is that all that you are?" she asked.

I am a mother, a writer, an ex-wife.  I'm a friend, a confidante, a lover.  Sometimes I am an enemy and a source of vexation and misery, both from my own perspective and from others'.  And sometimes I am a raging fucking bitch.

At any given moment, all of those things are true.  Who I am is relative to when I am, as well as to whoever is on the receiving end of my energy. 

With the boys, I am perpetually the mother, though sometimes I am the enemy.  With my parents, I am always the daughter, though I am also sometimes still just the child.  With my friends, I am a strange mix of mother and daughter and ex-wife and friend and confidante, all wrapped up in a big, glittery bow. 

With men, though, I tend to be the Golden Kitten (see Persona Non Grata for the full definition) and rely heavily on my sexuality as a defining characteristic.  Honestly, it's hard to miss and garners both attention and acclaim, though sometimes to my own detriment.  I am consistently a flirt but am generally very capable of staying distant from unwanted attention.  When I want the attention, though, that is when the beast blinks her long lashes and licks her bright, shiny lips in anticipation—both theirs and mine.  I am very adept at using my charms to get a man's attention, as well as to keep it if I think it's waning. 

There's an aftermath of letdown that can come from that, though.  The initial rush of lust may ebb quickly, especially if I become bored.  If I find a man to be uninteresting or substantially less intelligent than I, I will back away almost sadly; to have put the energy into it just to be disappointed—in another person or in my own judgment—feels fruitless.  I know in my head that there's something to be learned in those exchanges, no matter how brief, but it still can feel like a waste of my damn time. 

Sometimes I am just a mess.  I can be a petulant, little brat.  I can have moments when I dismiss all of the lessons I've learned and just screw the fuck up. 

All of these definitions of me depend on the moment in my day, in my life, and where I am or who is watching.  The people closest to me are able to see through the bullshit bravado and tell me the truth as they see it.  They are able to see me and to love me, no matter which me I am projecting.  Even when I am infuriating and loud and obsessive and bawdy, they know there are profound moments of quiet and sadness and deep, loyal love that are theirs for the taking—even when they don't ask.  But for me to willingly show those aspects of Stephanie to another person makes me the prey.  It makes me feel vulnerable, all Hunger Games style, like Katniss running toward the Cornucopia for everything she needs to survive. 

The best definition of me is made when all of those things come together, when the Golden Kitten can be still, curled up quietly while wearing little more than her glittery, pink heels.  It's a rare moment, truly, when the pretense can fall away, when I can feel safe and trusting enough to let my guard down and just love another person.  That is when I am most undeniably, most fiercely, and most extraordinarily Stephanie. 

 

You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter....

It started a year or two ago, the Nicknaming of the Inner Circle. 

I received a message from a friend, Amanda, who relayed the tale of a dream she'd had the night before, in which I was some kind of superheroine, fighting some crazy criminal villain while wearing a witchy purple dress and kickass black boots.  She was my sidekick. 

"We need names," I said.

As I thought about it all day, I kept going back to something she'd been calling me for days: sassy. 

"Sassafras," I decided. 

But Sass needed a last name.  Something Irish.  Something poignant. 

One of the songs I constantly go back to—even though one friend (Pickle) will ridicule me ad infinitum for this—is "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes.  It's tied to my childhood and my later youth and even my adulthood.  I have a Bucket List goal to get different, incredibly varied musicians to record an album that's nothing but covers of that song.  Adam Taylor and Wesley Cook have both agreed, in principle.  I'd love to get Les Claypool, Greg Dulli, and maybe In This Moment to record it, too.  I'd even happily donate all the proceeds to charity, though I have no idea what charity would want money from a song about two people trying to cheat on their spouses.  (Again, I argue, it's not about adultery; it's about serendipity!)

The bar where the two meet to plan their escape is O'Malley's.  Perfect.

So now Sassafras O'Malley needed a sidekick. 

I wracked my brain but could think of nothing.  She became Mandypants for lack of a better option.  And it stuck for a long while.  Recently after posting about a surgical procedure in which she was effectively microwaving her lady parts, I deemed her Hot Pocket.  And it suits her beautifully.

So Sassafras O'Malley and Mandypants (now Hot Pocket) were the first two of the nicknamed.  That list has grown and grown and grown since this began.  It seems silly, yes, but these nicknames are like our true names.  These are the second names, the names that are particular, peculiar, and more dignified, to help us keep our tails perpendicular.

Growler – who is sweet like a little kitten but will turn beastly in a moment if you cross her

Hammer – the Hammer of Honesty who can tell the truth like no one else

Moonshine – blue and bright and glowing, can always make you a little drunk with her beauty

Queen Frostine – the coolest chick you'll ever meet

Cookie – never a Tagalong and never a Thin Mint, but sweet and crunchy nonetheless

Lady Hammer – a strange female reflection of the truths of Hammer, totally unexpected

Glee – gregarious and ebullient, she knows the words to any and every song

Roadkill – who will step out in front of a moving car, admonishing you that they'll stop

Cupid37 – who dressed up as Cupid (and sometimes worse) in public and appears in chapter 37

Pickle – because he's always drunk, but also because he's both sweet and sour but not a baby gherkin

Irish Coffee/Not Boy – the Irish-descended guy I like to drink coffee with, who's not my boyfriend

Absolem – the questioning caterpillar to my Alice, who can unhinge me by asking me who I am

DH – Dear Husband, as assigned in the infertility forums 14 years ago, soon possibly DX or DXH or DB

Minizon - daughter of Hot Pocket, my Glamazon-in-training

There are a couple of others, but I don't know if they know the origins of their internal nicknames, so I'm opting to keep them in the vault.  For now.

Sometimes we have learned of our super powers.  Some are still a secret. 

Sassafras O'Malley, who can utterly mesmerize you with her potty mouth, has a special disco ball ring that dazzles stupid people into submission, specifically to keep them from copulating when her muchness leaks into the water supply.  It's a tool to lower the chances of stupid people breeding.  (She also has sparkly boots.) 

Growler has the ability to create snow angels anywhere, out of thin air.  She can mesmerize animals instantly and cause them to do her bidding. 

Hot Pocket has the Broccoli Bomb.  When she unleashes it, it makes everyone around her snort broccoli up the back of their noses.  Painfully funny. 

The list is likely to go on and on as time progresses.  I haven't named all of these people.  In fact, maybe only half of them.  Hammer has had a hand in the naming, as has Hot Pocket.  But these names are so appropriate for each and every one of these friends.  It's like they just whispered themselves to us in an inexplicable moment of truth.  Mostly when we were sober. 

They're my incomparable cast and crew. 

And these are the names that will never belong to another (fragile) cat.  They are ours and ours alone. 

But somewhere, deep down, each of also has a third name, the one that no other human can ever discover.  Our deep inscrutable singular names that only we know and only we call ourselves, respectively.  I know mine, but I'm not sharing.  Only one other person knows it, and that's only because he knew it before I did.  That's Absolem.  And I know he's not telling. 

 

Listen here, young lady. All that matters is what makes you happy.

Since the night I first thought I was pregnant with my elder son—days before I found out I was actually, finally pregnant—I have wished on each first star I saw that night for happy, healthy babies.  When I pray, which isn't often, it always for happy, healthy babies. 

On the surface, this seems to be what every parent wants for their child, and we do everything we can to make that happen.  We carefully feed and clothe them.  We give them every opportunity we can to find the things that bring them joy.  We try to teach them right from wrong and that right will make them happy.

But happiness is a little overrated.  Don't get me wrong: to be happy feels spectacular.  And it is wonderful to be in a state of bliss, no matter that it is often fleeting and hard to attain.

The better goal, I think, is contentment.  It's that state of being pleased with yourself and your life and your place in it that is perhaps harder-earned but more lasting. 

And it's not learning to be content with what you have.  (While that's a laudable way to live your life, it is often an endeavor that can lead to so much more distress and internal conflict, especially in Western culture.)  I want most for my boys—and myself and my friends and the people I love most in the world—to have lives in which they are surrounded by the things that make them content. 

I don't mean the tangible things that pass the time.  I mean the ability to have a job or career or life path that is rewarding to them both emotionally and materially enough to pay for their sustenance and the exploration of their lives.  I want them to be so in love with someone other than me that they can be deeply, truly emotionally and physically vulnerable and that their hearts can find peace each day in that love.

From these things can come great happiness, and from these things can come great sorrow.  But if they are content in their lives, able to journey at their own pace rather than at the speed their circumstances demand, then they will be able to weather the storms of joy and heartache in the healthiest way possible:  by being true to themselves. 

I don't have to pretend; she doesn't expect it from me.

Two years ago, I was fat and numb and unhappy.  I didn't know what the hell I wanted in my life, but it had to change.  It had to.  Maybe I didn't even know it needed to happen, maybe I did.  I don't really think I was consciously aware of how desperately there needed to be a shift in my life.

Never did I imagine the tempest that would take over my teapot.  I had no way to know that I would live the most unlikely of events and come to such a different place in my journey.  At the time, I didn't even know there was a journey; there was only that place and time that I was and from whence I'd come. 

But here I am, two years later, more than a hundred pounds lighter than I was then, with more shoes and better hair.  I'm weeks away from releasing my first novel, and I'm in the process of getting divorced. 

As dramatic as the logistical changes in my life appear to be, it's the intangible ones that are truly the most remarkable. 

A friend said to me a few days ago, "I know it's hard for you to believe, but you deserve more."

My gut response was, "No, I don't."  But before I could even say those words, I thought, "You're right.  I do, and I know it." 

And here's what I've come to discover in the last two years: I deserve the chance to be happy.  I deserve the good things that I feel are coming my way.  I deserve the chance at contentment and peace in myself because I have earned the right to accept and own those things. 

It took me a very long time to really connect with my own self-worth, to truly understand that the inherent Stephanie had value unto herself, to her friends, and to society in general.  I could always see the impact my deeds and actions had on the world around me, but I didn't always feel that I was worth much of anything. 

My value doesn't come from the crap I've done in the last two years.  I'm not worthwhile now only because I fit a little better into society's idea of how women should look.  It's not like my words suddenly matter just because I have a blog.  I'm am worth more and deserve more because I am strong enough to accept more.  I'm a persnickety Virgo—I've always had exacting demands and high expectations, though probably moreso of other people than of myself in recent years.  Rather than becoming petulant and bitter that things don't go the way I think they should, I often find myself actively seeking the best in what I've been given, plus ways to actually achieve what I want.  I'm much more proactive in living my life now than I was two years ago. 

But it's also not like I don't have moments where I feel like all of that could fall apart.  Things happen that make me want to crumble.  My inner circle can testify to that fact that I still have days when I blow up and break down and get very, very upset about the principle and the specifics of shit that just goes wrong. 

Everything that happens now, good or bad, wonderful or horrible, sacred or profane, I will experience it and feel it as fully as I can, knowing that I have earned that right.  These are my moments to recognize and comprehend in the fullest way that only I know how, and I intend to live every single one of them.