What we have lost

I was trying to sleep tonight, but because of an exchange with a friend on Facebook, on top of many revelations in this past months in relation to the #metoo movement, I began to cry for what we have lost. All women. I will speak for women because I am one. I will speak for women because we so rarely have the chance to frame our own narrative, claim our own reality on our own terms, unless it's packaged in a way considered somehow acceptable or tamed through a "female" genre or whatever.

So, I will speak for women and what we have lost, any of us - who are probably most of us - who have experienced any form of sexual assault or harassment and its evil step-twin misogyny. Which then basically makes it all women, and what I want to speak of is what we have lost.

What we have lost is not so much about the events themselves, it is about how the effects of these events and the misogynist surround which greets us when or if we ever try to tell or don't tell or just exist afterwards, or during repeated harassment or assault, resound throughout our entire lives. The damage that does not go away, no matter how much therapy or recovery or crystal work or religion or dream work or art we make or yoga and meditation we do or careers we succeed or fail in or relationships that may even be - against all odds - loving we experience. Because surrounding us is fear, loss of confidence, the proverbial hole in the soul, a kind of brittleness that means the fluidity we always hear about is not available to us so certain events or sounds or motions or smells or enclosures or open roads or houses or ways people look at us or even the weather can send us right back to the event or events and there we are again, helpless, crying, enraged or whatever, but in some way reactive. In some essential way not free. I have fought this reality my whole life, that is what I learned to do, but underneath the fight is an abandoned and abused girl child and then adult woman who even when she tried to "make it" in the world faced resistances not faced by her male counterparts but was told she was "equal" so felt even weaker because why if she was "equal" did she feel so inferior and so...a felt shamed by a fundamental weakness, a sense of enslavement, a sense of total unreality with an underlying tone of fraud - all taken onto my own self, as if I had caused it all.

But this is not just about me, so here is a catalogue of some of the losses. This will inevitably only scratch the surface:

If we are women who were assaulted or raped or coerced explicitly or implicitly into what were somehow framed as "affairs" as tiny children up to tweens, we never have a sense of our own bodies, of any basic agency. We are dissociated. Usually we have been told not to tell, or that we are imagining what happened or that we somehow caused it or are inherently evil. So our reality is damaged, too. We cannot only not trust our bodies, we cannot trust our minds or even souls.

If even with all of this we find an art or career or something outside of ourselves to focus on and succeed, we will run into men in these fields who are either angry and ignore us or try to hit on us; and if they are in power and we accede then we are considered whores or sluts or "sleeping our way to the top" or if we don't we are considered "bitches" "cunts" "ice queens." This assessment includes all men who engage in non-consensual sexual touch or talk from bosses to some guy on the subway trying to get our attention to male relatives or whomever - men who want us to do what they want us to do and if we do: we are prey. If we don't: we are a threat to be neutralized.

If we somehow find a way to create a tough enough skin to navigate all of the above, our intimate relationships with men suffer, badly. How can we drop that tough shell to allow any kind of intimacy? Or, if we do, how will we know who is healthy and what level of vulnerability is OK versus who is gaslighting us by telling us we are "too hard" and then abusing any trust we allow ourselves? Or maybe we even end up in an actively abusive relationship and can't tell the difference because it's so much like home. Then maybe enough of this finally erodes the career we may have wangled, or maybe we want to succeed badly enough that we never let anyone near us. So we lose any real human connection.

If we try to have children and can't or can, any number of consequences follow, too numerous to begin to even list, but given how motherhood is framed in this country, there is literally no way to do it right. You will be considered either cold or smothering or helicopter or uncaring or whatever, and if you don't have kids you have to justify it to everyone over and over and over and over again, even if you had miscarriages and other events in your life no one in their right mind even wants to know about, so you create a cover story and that cover story sticks and...

This is the biggest lost of all: basic reality, because in all these cases - abuse, harassment, childlessness, motherhood, being single, being stuck in a bad relationship or somehow not able to give yourself what you need to create, you tell yourself and others cover stories to protect yourself, and those cover stories make your life in some fundamental way a lie and you know that and you may go to zillions of years of therapy and go to every workshop ever known to human kind and still have that feeling, because until such a point as you are allowed - as John Lennon sang - to "feel your own pain" you will never be close to your reality, but...

If you Do finally feel your own pain and then you try to talk out loud about it, woe betide you, woman. Because then All Hell Breaks loose and people get very, very. very angry indeed because your reality does not accord with theirs and/or threatens theirs and you are shut down in many ways great and small, from either writing or talking or being published so this can be seen or if it is published someone will claim you are lying or stole it or are a vindictive bitch or whatever...

And meanwhile, too, there are all the subtle ways as an adult you are policed, by men catcalling you or not catcalling you, by men paying way too much attention to your body or none at all, by being seen as meat or seen as nonexistent - and these are usually the choices when dealing with everyday sexism and misogyny. (And no it's not all men, but it's a lot, so if you aren't doing all this, that's wonderful, and we're probably friends, but please don't decide you have to tell me that, because all that means is you are acting like a decent person and frankly I, we all, need more than that. We need you men to speak out against the sexism and misogyny and harassment you see. We need you to be John Oliver talking to Dustin Hoffman. We need that level of ally. I welcome you all. I sincerely do). But so, perhaps you dress in sack cloth because invisible is easier or you dress in a more "sexy" (according to whatever standard - usually not female) way but then have to negotiate all the attention you get for this and suffer being blamed if any sexual harassment occurs or if you are the sack cloth variety being disbelieved if you tell anyone sexual harassment occurred, because you aren't considered "sexy" and on and on...

If you are raped as a child or adult, you live in fear of men for the rest of your life basically, and even if you weren't raped, you live in fear of being raped - and perhaps upon hearing a story of how someone was raped, you start judging that woman for being drunk or out late or wearing sexy clothes or walking alone in a park or at night or breathing too loud or whatever and what you are doing then is delineating the walls of your own prison wherein you are not allowed to do these things without consequence, so much so that if Someone Raped You it would be your own damn fault for dating, getting in a cab, walking in the dark or just wearing a skirt or pants or again you know breathing while female.

Which leads to the biggest loss of all - our sense of self with agency and without a seemingly bottomless well of guilt and shame wherein we drown every day because no matter how abusive or horrible anyone has been to us in a relationship or at work or some asshole on the street somehow it is Our Fault. And nothing - literally Nothing - in the larger culture says otherwise...

Until now.

Until #metoo.

Until a powerful man and then men begin to lose their jobs because at least some women are believed and some of the damage is exposed and some reality is revealed and you think for a second - maybe two - wow, maybe someone will believe me. Maybe there is a place for me here after all, as I actually am.

My real life.

But then once that sinks in, you start to cry and cry and cry, because you are, say, 54 (or 68 or 75 or 42 or whatever) and you realize How Much Of Your Life You Have Lost, and if you are an artist How Very Much You Have Lost in terms of time, depth without fear, alacrity, any kind of effortless connection to authentic creativity, to the confidence to put your vision out there, to somehow exist without the constant drum beat of self-effacement, poverty and the inability to inhabit your own work, whatever it is - or even if you can for a time, some part of you is failing failing failing and if not propped up by some external structure just fading out - in part because if you are my age or older you got no mentoring in school because all the professors were men and hated you or hit on you or just plain ignored you in favor of their young, male proteges and you can't say any of that of course because then you're just an Angry Woman or a Bitch, etc. and no one likes that so you sway and twist and cajole or sometimes fight but all the energy expended ust to get maybe 1/4 of the resources and 1/8 of the exposure, but you are told you are Equal so you feel like an asshole because if you are Equal why aren't you measuring up and then the constant level of harassment or fear or being ignored as you go out into the world and and and...

This is what we have lost: millennia of women's voices, creativity, vitality, and love - yes, love, because real love can only come from freedom not slavery - and what you probably think of as women's love isn't love, it's a learned response to save us from being hurt. It looks like love and nurturance but it is bred out of fear. Not all love of course, but a lot of what we are told to think of as love - all of us who have been injured since children anyway, it is almost torture to contemplate what it might mean to really love. You need freedom to love. You cannot be living in fear. I know very few women who don't live in fear. So...do the math.

We find ways, we are resourceful, but some essence needs to be freed, and now IS being freed and here is the thing, my male friends especially I hope you can hear this:

It Will Not Be Pretty.

This is a tsunami of pain, secrets and lies - lies told out of self-protection - of either the abused or abuser - that is coming out, it will wash away many things and be indiscriminate. It is not now - nor should it be - about "scale" or - the last refuge of scoundrels -"nuance" - it is about Millennia of repression being unearthed and it must happen.

I honestly believe this is the only hope for our future on this planet, no joke. Think of it: over half the population enslaved - not to mention all the intersectional issues that I just can't address here but know exist - in terms of race and class and how that impedes so much and hurts in similar ways and intersects with this sense of slavery and fear. But right now I want to talk about sexual harassment and abuse of women and how that intersects with the bedrock of misogyny in our culture.

I beg of you all - including women who I sense have a desire to put a stop to this for whatever reasons - either people you like are getting hurt or you are afraid of facing your own damage or pain or rage - I don't know - you have to let this unfold - go where it goes, take its course.

I entreat everyone to take the time to mourn what we have lost. Stop minimizing it. Stop deciding some victims are more virtuous than others or some assault and harassment is "real" and some is "no big deal." It's not true. You can't be a little bit pregnant with this. Your body knows when it has been violated, and most violators know exactly what they are doing, even if they try to subsume that awareness in elaborate self-justification or garden variety denial.

This pain must come out, we must see the extent of the damage, we must not look away, No Matter Where it Leads.

We must face what we have lost: the beauty, the creativity, the intimacy...and give that loss its due and then only once we have accepted that, really accepted that, will we know how to rebuild. Only then do we have a prayer of not rebuilding it in this way. I know this sounds utopian but I actually think this is necessary for our survival as a species.

On a personal level I hope I can honor all the damage. I cry, yes, but then I stop myself, afraid of the depths of the pain, the rage, all of it. I pray for the confidence to allow for it. I pray for you, too, for all of us.

We have a chance here. A real chance.

I hope we take it.

30 years is a long time

Honestly, these days since January 20, which was the memorial for my stepfather and the beginning of our Brave New World in the US simultaneously, has rendered me for the most part speechless. I have responded to issues piecemeal on Facebook and such, but here, I cannot find anything to say.

I have had a lot of thoughts and feelings about everything, but because I am afraid that everyone is being so reactive and that is not helping, I don't want to just add to the cacophony.

However, yesterday I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my sobriety and feel I should mark this kind of astonishing milestone somehow. When I last had a drink or drug, Reagan was President, there was a Soviet Union and a Wall in Berlin, most people including me still wrote on typewriters and even if some did have personal computers, there was no public internet; we had no cell phones and used landlines with receivers that were connected to the phone by a cord, and I had a cheap rent in the Haight in San Francisco. I was 23 years old.

The journey from there to here has been a bumpy one - I don't think anyone can live thirty years without bumps. The thing is if you are sober for a long time the best description I've ever heard of that experience is: no windshield. Alcoholics are born without shock-absorbers. There is biochemistry to support this, but that is the effect. Add to that traumatic experiences in childhood on, and you kind of have an addict and/or alcoholic-in-waiting. Some people avoid this fate, but many don't.

I didn't.

However, my drinking story is not that interesting, nor is anyone else's drinking story that interesting - at least not to me anymore. What interests me is finding ways to live sober, without the windshield and without taking it out on everyone else.

This is what preoccupies me, and what I have succeeded at in the technical sense for 30 years (aka no alcohol or drugs) but in terms of living a serene life or whatever, not so much. I mean I have to some degree, and I have meditated for over 20 years, practiced yoga for 16 years, done years of therapy, etc., not to mention going to meetings with people who are struggling to do the same kind of thing. All of this helps. And without all of this I doubt I would still be sober or possess whatever shred of sanity that I do.

However, loss still tears me apart. Another reason I haven't written is the grief over losing David, and then compounded by losing my step-grandmother recently, plus the country arguably, or at least whatever I thought democracy was meant to be. I feel exposed in the rawest way. Sometimes I can cope and sometimes - usually when in yoga class - I can feel deep vital parts of me shifting. I am being shorn of any pretense of pride or whatever, of any sense of "knowing" things. Does this make you wise or just insecure? We will see.

I do feel underneath all of this something is emerging, and I am being forced to surrender to forces larger than me on a daily, sometimes minute by minute basis to move through. Sometimes this can even feel good. A lot of times I feel edgy, sometimes raw, sometimes like everything kind of just itches - not literally - but just - it's uncomfortable.

Sometimes I write about it, but recently I haven't been writing that much either. That field seems to need to lay fallow. It feels almost abusive to try to write now. I have been writing at an almost machine-like pace for years now, and I've hit the end of that line. The good news is I seem to want to be out in the world a bit more.

My fractured foot also has played a large part in my awkwardness this past year. I was unable to move for months without pain and now can move but still can't walk the endless way I used to walk, which was and is my favorite exercise. I feel I became almost agoraphobic, and am now peeking outside of that.

Meanwhile, through all of this, I am sober, and that is a miracle, because all of what I am describing would have been reason enough to drink - a lot. Though to be honest, breathing was enough of a reason to drink a lot most days I drank, so there's that. But the fact I can move through all this massive discomfort that feels like it's probably growth and who really wants that at 53 I ask you? Not me, I assure you, but I seem to have no choice. In fact this endless 'growing' bit appears to be the wages of sobriety. Apparently, if your tendency to mute the effect of all that wind hitting you in the face because of having no windshield is to drink and you stop drinking, or doing whatever else you used to get you through the night, then you are doomed to constant 'growth.'

Growth.

Sounds so lovely, so healthy, so fabulous, right?

Hahahahahahaha.

Think about it. Look at toddlers falling over when they try to walk. It's cool, because they are little and people are encouraging them all the time. But imagine doing this - on an emotional level - at 53. You kind of feel - well - stupid. My experience of long-term sobriety is like being a toddler over and over and over and over again - or like a snake shedding its skin, except when the old one goes there isn't a new one underneath right away. That kinda thing.

I'm not complaining - though goddess knows this sounds like complaining - just kind of trying to give you the felt sense of it. Because if you know any clean and sober people, you probably think they are batshit crazy, and you are probably right. Just remember, if we were drinking, game over. We may even on the surface have seemed a little more normal when we were drinking - until a certain point, but then...disaster, not only for ourselves but anyone around us.

For the vast majority of you lucky enough to not be alcoholics or addicts, just remember when dealing with your sober friends that we are wandering around with literally thin skins and everything is hitting us at 11. In my case that includes sounds, smells, visuals, emotions, tastes. It's like living in a hyper-reality.

There are some benefits to this of course, especially if you happen to write, make theater or art or music of any kind. You can be available on levels that are amplified. On the other hand, it can be hard - if not impossible - to turn down this level of sensitivity. I imagine therefore most of us seem hopelessly self-absorbed, and sometimes, yeah, we are. but sometimes, we just Can't Turn Down the Volume on life while it's hitting us like a motherfucker.

At those moments, I tend to retreat. But then can feel isolated and want to come out, but then feel agoraphobic because have retreated, etc. Weird cycles like that.

But I am also exquisitely attuned to the people to whom I am listening, whether in meetings or classes or with friends. I have learned tools over the years that I think makes me a good friend, especially not giving out advice unsolicited and even being cautious when it's solicited. I find most people - including me - don't want to be fixed, but rather want a sympathetic ear.

I do my best to help others who are trying to live without drugs or alcohol. I also do my best to put voices and work out into the world that might not be heard or seen otherwise.

I am not mentioning politics, because honestly, what's the point? Everyone is talking about it all the time, and I have nothing great to add. I only hope we keep trying to listen to one another and don't block off avenues of communication. The rest is too scary for me to even attempt to write about right now. All I know to do is what I have done with the seemingly impossible foe of addiction: surrender to what I am powerless to change and to work my ass off to change the things I can. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the surrender has to come first, because if I'm putting energy into trying to change what I can't, I have zero energy to change what I can.

Right now, I am glad I live a life based on the concept of living one day at a time, because I could not cope with any of this otherwise without recourse to better living through chemistry.

I miss David so much it hurts. I miss in some ways my youth and ability to believe my own bullshit or was that confidence? In any case, right now I am tired. It is 4:12am. I don't know what else to say, and not sure anything I have said is worth a damn, but here it is. March 4, 2017. 30 years sober and with a car alarm whining outside my window as cars drive by. The car alarm has finally stopped, and so shall I.

Oops, no, forgot the most important part of all: gratitude. Grateful for all the folks who have helped me along the way. Those in and outside of meetings, who have listened when I was freaking and when I was celebrating, when I was angry and sad, when I was triumphant and when I fell on my face, who attended my weddings - yes that's plural - and helped me through divorces (also plural) - who have been there for me no matter what. Whether for a brief time or a long time. Without all of you and all your love, I would be sunk. Also to my higher power that I choose to call whatever - it changes all the time - and sounds so ridiculous in words and yet is there for me whenever I ask and no I can't explain it and yes it sounds absurd, but there it is and part of it is all of you. So, thank you. You all know who you are.

Here comes the rain again...

Yeah I know it's a line from the Eurythmics, which dates me as ancient ...

I came home, put on some music, Vivaldi - that innocuous - lay down on the rug and started crying.  I hate music right now.  Whenever I put it on, I cry, because it puts me in touch with the dreaded emotions. The second anniversary of my father's death is coming up on Saturday...quickly followed by the day B and I got together for the first time and of course now he's gone.  So, it just sucks.

At first I thought the emotional weight was more about the separation, but that's not true at all - it's more about my father.  Or both, or like who cares...it sucks.

I don't know what to do on Saturday.  I asked a friend to spend the day with me, we'll see if that's possible.  I hate asking things like that of people, but I did it - by email.  OK, not the best way but the best I could do.  I'm not on my way up to Kripalu like I'd hoped, because right now I fear it's too expensive plus I am sick to death of traveling.

Weirdly enough last night while I stared at the idiot Iowa Caucus, a whole corner of my neighborhood burned down, literally 2 blocks away - which included my local pet food store, laundromat, bank, hardware store and yoga studio.  All of it - gone in a huge blaze.  It's sad to see so many small business (aside from the bank) wiped out.  Plus on a purely selfish level disorienting - where should I bring my laundry now, buy my cat food, do yoga and find a place to get money and deposit it...of course it being NYC these questions can be answered relatively easily and will only involve walking a few more blocks here or there, but still it's just so odd.

Going to my writer's meeting tonight, the train stopped because there was 'a person on the tracks' - I don't know if that's the equivalent of the London tube 'person under a train' announcement (which was announced with disturbing regularity I should add), but right after seeing the burnt out skeleton of a corner of a city block, it wasn't the thing you want to hear.

On the bright side, I'm reading Mary Karr's Lit, which just gets better by the page.  I am both energized, inspired and somewhat envious reading it.  Envious of her ability to talk about her chaotic life so beautifully and sharply, thanks to her poet's ear, lack of self-pity and giant soulful  heart and also relevant to the dead father thing - the fact she had a meaningful relationship with her biological father - instead of having to sort through a variety pack with the original variety missing, except as a vapour trail.  Her father was a stone alcoholic so I'm not talking about hearts and flowers, but it was a real relationship and with my father that never happened.  I chased after him as a child without much luck.  He made some attempts to connect with me - sort of - when I was an adult, which I batted away, angry at that point.  Then just when we were trying to connect, he had a stroke and couldn't talk, then when he could he was aphasic and I later found was getting high throughout the whole supposed recovery process, so like that couldn't help matters.  Pot heads.  I am sorry if you are reading this and like pot, I fucking hate what it does to people over the long term.  It makes people recede, gradually, so slowly it's like trying to watch the earth turn, but just as inexorably, it does turn and the person is gone, gone, gone....Like my father, like so many people.

I know it's fashionable these days to say marijuana is so great and it's a medical thing and blah blah blah but I say bullshit.  I've seen it slowly destroy so many people, including, obviously, my father.  Alcohol is just as bad, if not arguably worse and certainly messier, but I don't hold with the idea it's healthier or innocuous.  Maybe there are people who can smoke pot the way those of you who can have a social drink do that and if so, hooray for you.  But I've seen too much damage people...believe me, I know what I'm talking about here.

And of course I'm angry about that because the sadness and the loss is just unbearable.  Un-fucking-bearable.  To have not had a father and then watch him die is just horrendous.  I'm not the first and won't be the last and I'm lucky I suppose to have had any relationship with him at all, but there are other things, too, that are even harder to talk about and perhaps won't be spoken of on this blog.  But it's not pretty, I'll leave it there and let you fill in your own blanks.

I've forgiven him, that was the gift I was given by showing up at the hospital.  I wrote about that last year and the story of that has been published in a collection, which when I receive a copy of it, will tell you where you can get it if you're interested.  But after forgiving him, all the suppressed emotions came pouring out, having been frozen as resentment in some nuclear bunker of dissociative lock-down...so when the forgiveness came, next were the tears and the rage and the nausea and the fears of certain kinds of weird things I can't bring myself to talk about yet publicly and damn it was hard...and led probably to the end of my marriage as all this came tumbling out and I went from Julia-light to Julia-full on...not exactly what B had signed up for.  That makes me very sad, too.  To think that 'all of me' is a problem or too much for someone, etc.  Another motivator that got me back to NYC.  The place where no one can be too much of anything.  Thank Christ and All of Her/His Disciples for that.

So, for better or for fucking worse, I am fully accounted for now.  And to some people that's a good thing and to some people it's a scary thing and you know what, I just don't have the time for people who are scared by me anymore.  It's just so boring and kind of sad.  I mean I'm not scary.  I may be strong sometimes, crumple sometimes, be needy sometimes, be self-sufficient other times, have a sense of humor and sometimes deploy sarcasm (shock!) and even - gasp - use big words, but like who cares?  If I was male, none of this would even be the teeny tiniest issue.  I don't know why it's taken me so many years on this planet to truly hip to the level of molecular sexism on the planet, but damn it's dull and frustrating and just kind of Exhausting to deal with - ya know?  I'm not blaming all men for this and I know women, too, who are misogynist, but damn when can we finally shitcan this bullshit?  It is so last millennium...and the one before that...and the one before....

So to end on a positive note about my father in regards to this - the little time we did spend together when I was young, he taught me chess, gave me model battleships and chemistry sets, took me to art and science museums and never, ever told me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.  The only sexism I ever encountered within my family was reverse sexism when my grandmother Jani got angry at me for dropping trigonometry because she thought I should be a physicist, since there weren't enough female physicists.

Arguably, I suppose, no one gave me 'girl' training.  And maybe that was a good thing.  Though I suppose some would argue it wouldn't have hurt to 'embrace my femininity' or whatever...not sure that would have helped much.  But looking back at clothes I wore as a young adult, especially when with my first husband, I kind of wish I hadn't dressed with the moral equivalent of sack cloth.  There are reasons for that, but it's sad to see - no celebration or awareness of my body at all...It's been such a painful journey to embrace my physical self - with steps forward and back and all around the track...

So much loss, so little joy.  I have to believe that is changing now.  I really hope so.  After the rain, generally sun...and fresher air.  No guarantee the rain doesn't return of course, but nor do I have to drown in it.  But accept it, I must.  However, it's nice to be back in a physical climate where the rain does not come all the time...

Grateful for the heat in my apartment now as it's bitterly cold outside, but so toasty inside between that and the lovely coat I bought on super-sale in Maine, I'm good.  Grateful, too, for enough money for food, clothing, rent and the love from good friends and family.  Grateful, too, to be home, where I can't be too much of anything, even if sometimes I miss the real live social safety net of UK, which believe me I do...still, for now, I'm supposed to be here.  God/dess help me.  (And no, I don't mean Rick Santorum)