My Doctor Said It Was Okay

Smoke weed after I forgot to pack my extra meds? No problem. Have absolutely NO desire or plans to look for a job? So what? “You worked long enough.” Say I want to become a full-time researcher of increased Veteran Administration benefits for PTSD? Talk to other vets she said. Yes, that’s the advice I get from my psychiatrist. Honestly, I. Fucking. Cannot! Is there nothing I can say to this woman where her response makes me feel judged? Is she ever going to say something that makes me feel as though I am just a lazy, crazy woman? It doesn’t seem that way. I swear at times I’m not sure if she is empowering me or enabling me but I always end up smiling at her, with a combination of shock and fucking awe. Then I leave and go back to doing things my way.

But what if she’s right? Maybe I should practice feeling at ease more often. You know, practice not judging myself so harshly for the umpteen chores and deeds left undone. After all, isn’t that supposed to be the desired result of all the medications, meditations, counseling sessions, and coaching tips designed to help me live ‘intentionally’? I would one day wake up with a change in my mindset; become more focused on my true self and let go of the shoulds and should nots. Guilt and self-consciousness would fall away to the point where all my actions would reveal the inner peace I had found. Damn that sounds nice! Needless to say, I am not there yet. Not even close. Even now my mind is wandering and practicing elevator speeches to be used when I feel the need to justify my actions. Seriously, let’s be honest. How do you explain to people that you can’t work. I don’t mean physically unable to, I mean emotionally unable to, at least for any sustained period of time. As in, more and more I’ve found that working around other people brings out the worst in me. While attempting to talk to a man I met about my depression he stated that depression was the direct result of loneliness. Wait, What in the fuck?  So what happens if I were to meet someone? A male someone. What would he think? As a matter of fact, how would I feel if a man did this? How would I respond to a man telling me he was done working because his emotions can’t handle it? I’m pretty damn sure I would scorn him and judge the hell out of him.

Oh shit! Is that what I’m afraid of, that people will judge me the way I would them? Because truth be told I judge the shit out of, well, everything. Wow, I guess that says a lot about me! This is all in my head, isn’t it? I’m the one feeling guilty for not working. I’m the one who is embarrassed because I can’t stay on a job longer than ninety days without feeling like I’m losing my mind. I’m the one sitting around all day looking employment websites, knowing damn well there isn’t a vacancy out there that I want to fill. But It’s. All. In. Vain. Nobody gives a shit whether or not I have a job, just as long as they don’t have to help support me. And right now, I’m good. Six months since I last worked, and I’m just returning from a three-month stay in Trinidad. All bills paid by me, thank you very much.

You know what? This time I will listen to my doctor and step away from the old ideas of how I ‘should’ be. Instead, I will focus on getting to know who I really am and live the life that real me needs. Okay, so what if I’ve said it all before? One day it will be true and maybe today is that day.

Thank you Dr. D!

A Tropical Depression

Well, so much for the idea that spending time here would keep my depression and anxiety at bay. Right now ‘here’ happens to be Tobago, Trinidad’s quieter, sister island. Its known for it’s gorgeous beaches and seriously laid-back vibe. I arrived on the island after a twenty-minute flight from Trinidad and planned to spend five days in a little guesthouse room I found on Airbnb. It’s clean, has air conditioning and a strong Wi-Fi signal. My agenda? Get an obscene amout of sleep and go to the beach every day. Nothing more. Nothing less. As simple as it sounds, things didn’t work out that way. This episode of anxiety started creeping up a few days ago but, rather than cancel the plans I had made and keep my ass in bed – as every fiber of my being begged me to, I ventured out into the world. You see, my friend had rented a car for a visit out to Charlotteville, a town on the other side of the island about an hour and a half drive from my base in Tobago. She had taken her first trip out there only a week ago, had fallen in love with the place after a couple of days and was excited as shit to share it with me. How could I let a little thing like my normal desire to be left alone get in the way of that? After all, spending time with her was a huge part of me deciding to visit Tobago on these dates.

Having an panic attack was not, however, part of my plans.

Parlatuvier, Tobago

Parlatuvier Bay, Tobago coming back from Pirate’s Bay

The day started off  with me being a good forty-five minutes late getting ready. That alone should have been my sign to go straight back to bed because I fricken hate being late! And by hate, I mean lateness give me the worst panic attacks. I always assume my being late is a pox on the world. It makes me feel as though, I don’t know, like I’m worthless. They way I carry on you would think my being late just fucks up everybody’s life. Of course, it does no such thing, but that is how I feel. As I was getting out of the shower, she arrived. I walked out to the car barefoot, visibly shaking and fighting to hold back tears. The first twenty minutes of the drive I spent crying into the washcloth I’d brought along to wipe sweat from my face. Meanwhile, my friend is trying to offer me food while the driver is laughingly telling me to relax because I’m on vacation.

Are we having fun yet?

Charlotteville, Tobago

What should have been a pleasant drive through the lush Tobagonian countryside, turned into an uncomfortable, long ass road trip. And not just for me. Remember, I have my friend and the driver of the car in the front sitting in stunned silence, as I sniffle uncontrollably in the back seat. Talk about awkward. I won’t go into all the embarrassing details of the day because it makes my skin crawl to think how easily I can fall apart sometimes. The trip out to Charlotteville also included an unexpected (to me anyway), climb down some jagged rocks onto Pirate’s Bay. Now, my friend does Crossfit and bikes twenty or thirty miles all around California terrain. Me? I eat. The thought never entered her mind that the ‘little walk’ we were about to take might be a bit more than my fat ass could handle. It ended with me feeling like my heart was literally about to give out on me while climbing back up the rocks and steep steps. But the two of them took off like goats and were long gone. I tried to keep up, I really did, but it was beyond difficult just to breathe. I must have stopped six times just to catch my breath because it felt like someone was squeezing the oxygen out of me.

In short I. Was. Miserable!

These little steps almost ended me

Local guys playing a quick game of beach cricket on Pirate’s Bay

I spent the entire next day in bed, alternating between feeling like a whiny bitch and trying to figure out why the previous day had been so stressful for me. My conclusion is, for all the similarities we share ( we are Trinis who share a sister and have both been molested by relatives), on a basic level, we’re just very different. Even our approach to therapy and healing is different. Come to think of it, this isn’t the first time she’s been the subject of my blog posts. If we ever speak again, maybe we should jut stick to a cross-country telephone friendship. Oh yeah, she was scheduled to return to California last week, but as we haven’t spoken since the Charlotteville trip, I can only assume she made it okay. Yes, we’re both good at avoidance. As for me, the whole incident was so disappointing, I’ve decided to extend my time in Tobago.

Hell, I need some me time at the beach now more than ever.

Pirate’s Bay, Tobago

 

What The Fck America?

Ever since my arival here in Trinidad, my number one goal has been to remain calm and not let the stress of the world get into my head. That’s all I really want. Not hanging out at the beach or drinking with friends, or even stuffing my face with all the yummy Trini food I can get my hands on. No, all I need is to be stress-free. And with the notable exception of having to share living space with my lecherous cousin for a week, I can say my nerves have stayed pretty calm. But then I mess around go on Facebook only to see stories like this one, followed by responses like this and I find myself starting to feel a bit of sadness. Slowly that sadness gives way to anger, which leads to a tightness in my chest so severe that I have to remind myself to breathe. It doesn’t take long before I find myself thinking some pretty hateful shit. Shit like wanting to go find the assholes I read about and, literally, kill them. Slowly. I want to take a baseball bat to the cop’s head and then tie his balls to a tow dolly and drag him behind a car until he bleeds out. And I just want to smash that woman’s face in with my foot!

Obviously having such thoughts about people I don’t even know isn’t a good thing, but neither is the physical pain I feel when I come across these almost daily reports of how my people are treated in America. What rationale could there possibly be for a grown ass man to think it’s acceptable to choke his neighbor’s seven year-old son for littering? Worse yet, instead of doing what I would have done and confront the asshole directly, this woman calls the police only to have the responding officer behave as though the neighbor was within his rights to CHOKE A CHILD! He then proceeds to question the mother’s parenting skills. It’s as if Black children don’t even qualify to be victims of child abuse even in the face of totally unprovoked adult violence against them. But can you imagine how this whole story would have gone if the mother and her son had been white and the neighbor a Black man? Exactly! So what the fuck America? Why do your white people hate us so much? You know what, I don’t give a shit anymore! I am no longer interested in finding ways to prove my humanity to you. That’s the main reason I came home; to get away from all the racist shit that is embedded in America because all it does is cause my anxiety to surface and threaten to fuck up my whole vacation.

When Healing Sucks

On the day of his scheduled arrival I awoke suffering with nausea, dizzy spells and an overall shitty feeling that normally accompanies extremely high stress levels. It was only then I realized what day it was. It had been on my mind for almost two months, ever since I booked my visit home to Trinidad and learned he would be there. Talk about ruining my vacation plans! I had told myself it was all good and that there was nothing for me to stress over. But the sickness that came over me before my eyes were even fully open proved me to be liar. I was stressed out, even if my mind kept trying to tell me otherwise. It was the beginning of the week I would share a house with the cousin who had sexually molested me for several years. The day I had only spoken of to only three people: My shrink, my therapist and a friend who is struggling through a similar path. In all  those conversations, there seemed to be the need for me to come up with a game plan. How would I react to him? What would I say? Would I demand an apology? Would I become emotional? My plan was to find a time to take him aside and, with all the tact and vocabulary acquired through my years of therapy and medication, confront him. I would ask him why he did it. Inquire as to what his mindset had been at the time and if he realized how wrong and hurtful the whole thing had been for me. After all, isn’t that what healing is all about? Confronting the hurtful areas of our lives and taking back our power? Hells yeah! I was ready to do this.

Strangely, now that it is happening in real time, I really don’t feel the need for a confrontation; don’t feel the need to speak on it. The need to hear an apology seems unneccessary and whether it’s from fear, anger or apathy I’m not sure. Whatever the cause, any reasons he might give for what he did don’t matter to me. There’s no justification for a person to sexually take advantage of a child who had yet to reach the age of ten! Later on, he introduced me to drugs and coerced me into having sex long before I was emotionally ready to be sexual. Now it’s clear what effect that had on me. As early as fifth grade, I tried to sexualize every interaction I had with boys, even boys I didn’t like. I wanted them to touch me. It was as though my body couldn’t or didn’t feel complete unless it was being penetrated. And once my body got what it craved, I never wanted to speak to them again while they of course wanted more and more. Thank God I can’t remember what was probably said about me behind my back.

But now we are sharing a small space that includes unwitting family members and, because I cannot avoid him all the time, I treat him the way you would a person you neither like nor trust: Limited interaction. No direct eye contact, and I never call him by his name because in my mind he doesn’t deserve to be humanized like that. Seeing him interact with his daughter makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like the way he looks at her and always makes sure she is within arms reach. I find it problematic. She is tiny little thing; beautiful, talented and almost twenty-one. Although we have only just met, she confides that he’s overly protective and wonders how to get him to loosen his grip. If I only I had the right answers. Instead, my mind is swirling with the worst thoughts about whether or not he’s ever abused her, too and I hate it! Yet, how can I not think the worst? After speaking to her, it’s even harder for me to be around him. Sometimes healing sucks!

This week cannot end quickly enough.

Am I A Future Expat?

In February, the Veteran’s Administration concluded that, based on events that occurred while I was in the Army, I suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) along with clinical depression and anxiety. Because of this diagnosis they now send me a little monthly disability payment. Currently I am being treated by a V.A. psychiatrist and a readjusment counselor who specializes in treating veterans suffering from PTSD. Things were really going well for a while, so much so that I was only seeing my doctor once every ninety days. And that was mainly for prescription refills. But over the past few months it seems my  nerves have been unusually brittle. My insomnia is back and I’ve managed to pack on several pounds since I can’t seem to stop eating. After doing some digging, my psychiatrist determined I am having a negative, emotional reaction to the recent publicized killings of Black men by cops. I tried not to laugh in her face. But it looks like the joke was on me because, when I heard the police had killed another unarmed Black man only fifteen minutes from where my son lives out of state, I lost it! I am talking all day crying, pain in my chest, a gripping fear that my son would be the next one murdered in the street. It became too much for me and I fell apart. I felt like my whole world was about to end even though my son assured me he was alright. I swear I all but jumped out of a window. Thank God I live on the first floor.

Once I calmed down enough, I was able to schedule a session with my doctor and therapist two days apart. After listening to my reaction to all the madness going on and taking into account my recent meltdown, they both agreed that I should stay away from social media, which was bad enough. After all, how would I know what is going on in the world? But then they  dropped a bigger bomb. It seems like my mental state is such that I shouldn’t even attempt to get another job until I get a better handle on my emotions and reactions to life. In other words, don’t even think about working while you’re still this fucked up. Wait, what? You mean like, don’t work? How am I supposed to make a living, you know pay bills and stuff? Shit, I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I can not work and still live in South Florida or anywhere else in these Untied States of America. No, the spelling is not an error. My V.A. disability check isn’t that big. As a matter of fact, it’s not big at all. Besides, I have a cat to feed.

Let me get this straight, you want me to get better, take some time out for self-care and do it without a job. I sounded like a set-up to me. But after doing some research, guess what I discovered? I discovered that my little disability check can possibly work for me. Where? In Mexico, if I do it the right way. Now before you ask, my Spanish is on par with the average toddler’s. Anyway, after finding as much information on the web as I could, I decided it was time to check the place out in the flesh and took a quick trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Actually the town is called Playas de Tijuana, and it is thirty minutes south of the ‘rowdy’ Tijuana most people have heard about. It has tree-lined streets, nice weather during the day, a cool breeze at night and lots of affordable apartments options. I loved it! My family thinks I have truly lost my mind, in fact they all think I’m kidding. What they don’t realize is I am dead serious. Initially, I had thought about moving to Antigua, Guatemala. I’ve been there a couple of times and it is just the most laid back place ever. I know where to find good local food away from the tourist traps and as my former teacher and I have stayed in touch, there would be at least one human looking out for me. Unfortunately, Guatemala is a couple of hours away from the States by plane, whereas Playas de Tijuana is only about a forty minutes drive to San Diego. Where the V.A. hospital I need is located. No brainer. I do realize I would be away from my granddaughter, my son and my whole family, but maybe I ought to focus more on me. My brother and his family live twenty-two miles from me now, and I barely see them, even though we talk fairly often. My son and granddaughter live in another state as do both my sisters. The remainder of my family that I am close to all still live in Trinidad. Why shouldn’t I move to Mexico? Who knows, maybe this is the place where I can finally get to know the real me, the sane version of who I can be without the added stress of office politics, trying to fit in and family drama. Not to mention, where else can I be within walking distance to the beach, have spring-like weather year ’round and pay less than $500 per month for a nice apartment? Certainly not here in South Florida. Granted right now the beach is less than three miles from me, and I do walk to it, but you’d better believe I am paying more than $500 for rent. And don’t get me started on the never-ending heat. Who knows, maybe moving to a less humid place might help with these hot flashes. If that happens, sign me up as a future expat now!

Being recently unemployed, do I even have the money to move to Mexico? Honestly, I can’t even afford gas for a moving truck, much less the truck itself. Yet the more I think about it, the more I am loving the idea of going somewhere totally out of my comfort zone. A place where I am forced to stop playing around and really get serious about learning Spanish. A little spot that might just be a bit more inconvenient than what I am used to. Living out of the country means if things get a little rough, I am going to have to fend for myself, rather than reach out to the usual suspects for support. Getting the money together is going to be another story. Oh well, I guess that’s why it’s called an adventure.

I think I’m ready.

 

The Missing Pieces

 

Last night I just couldn’t sleep. It was two-thirty in the damn morning and instead of hitting my REM sleep cycle or whatever, I was restless and jumping out of bed every eight minutes in search of a snack like it was noon on a Saturday. All I could hear in my head was how late it was and how I needed to get some sleep. Then I remembered there was no urgency for me to get my requisite six hours of sleep because, since I had quit my job the previous day, I had no place to go. That’s when the reality of my situation bit me in the ass: Oh my God! What the hell did I just do? Ninety-six days into yet another new job I had gone into emotional overload and, certain that I couldn’t survive the pressure without my head exploding or having a nervous breakdown in City Hall, had just walked out in the middle of the day making it the third job I’ve had in under two years. For most people this shit is not normal. But unfortunately, it has become my normal.

Twenty-seven years ago I was honorably disharged from the Army after ten years of service. That was the first and longest job I’ve ever had. Since 1989 I have never held a job for even three years. I’ve been fired from three jobs, each time due to my attitude or failure to adjust to the environment and one of those times it was because I lost my fucking mind and actually got physical with my manager! When the hell did I become a thug? The rest of the jobs I left because I ‘just couldn’t take it anymore’. During the years I lived in Atlanta the running joke among my friends was to greet me with, “So where are you working now?” Sometimes I would laugh and answer with mock indignation that I had been working at the same place for six whole months, thank you very much. More often though, I would just shrug and give them the rundown on my latest gig. In response, they would always express shock, and faint admiration, at how easily I seemed to switch from job to job without missing a beat or a paycheck. Now here in Florida they just start off with, “Are you still working at (fill in the blank)?” And while it may have been easy for me in my 30’s and 40’s, let me tell you that job-hopping shit is hell in my mid-50’s. For one thing, not a whole lot of employers are hiring older workers without degrees and even though people insist I don’t look my age, at some point the dates on a resume cannot lie. For another, my ability to keep a lid on my emotions (anger), act like everyone else and deal with the fuckery that comes with employment has become almost non-existent. At times it seems as if the gene that helps you play well with others is completely missing from my DNA and there’s no way to fix me.

However, that’s not the story I hear from my therapists and psychiatrist. They tell me I am a much different person than I was three years ago and congratulate me on my progress. I don’t see it. They tell me to have patience with myself because I’ve spent my entire life just surviving and PTSD doesn’t just go away. I think to myself, at fifty-five years old, I don’t have time for fucking patience. They recite back to me things shared about my childhood, family life, relationships and my time in the military. They say I’ve been abused, a lot, but I did a good job taking care of myself and my son considering my experiences. Well, as good a job as I knew how under the circumstances. We spend a lot of time talking about my abuses. This gets me irritated and uncomfortable. At times I hear myself saying that I didn’t feel abused, that it was just the way things were. Hell, doesn’t every woman get beat up in a relationship? Often, I don’t remember the details, just the sadness of a situation so I shrug it off. Sometimes I crack jokes to relieve the tension. Most of the time though, I just cry. I cry because, even though I have done a damn good job of stuffing huge chunks of my past into barrels of forgetfulness then drowning them in alcohol, every conversation with these women reveals how fucked up my life has actually been. Apparently it’s not healthy to be raped twice before the age of nineteen or to have your older cousin coerce you into a sexual relationship when you’re only fourteen. The violent relationships, the drugs, the promiscuity, STD’s and abortions that were ever present during my teen years and into my late twenties? Also not healthy. Who knew?

Lately I find myself torn. Part of me is relieved to hear that even though I am a basket of nerves, anger and brittleness – is that even a word, there is actually a good explanation for it. And, with more therapy, I can become emotionally healthy and less abrasive. On the other hand, I am realizing that the more I learn about myself the more easily I seem to fall apart. Now it seems as though everything reminds me of something troubling from my past. The way someone talks to me. A strange man’s smile. Women I don’t even know but instantly dislike. A television show. It’s all becoming too much!  There was a reason I had stuffed all that shit down. Who needs to remember the physical and emotional pain, the feeling of being worthless, the sheer loneliness of what was my life? They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Those fuckers were wrong. In my earlier years my son needed me and therapy was a luxury I literally couldn’t afford so, while I sometimes had  insurance for anti-depressants, for the most part I soldiered on cold turkey. The Army was no place to be weak, even if you had been sexually assaulted. After all, they moved the guy to another company so everything was back to normal. Sure I would have crying jags and screaming fits, but I figured that’s just who I was. It was all I knew to do. These days my son is a grown man with a child of his own and suddenly there is time for therapy and self-growth and all the other feel-good shit that we Baby Boomers do. But instead of finally feeling whole, more often than not what I feel is resentment. Angry. Incomplete. A job, much like any relationship requires the ability to be confident enough so you don’t fall apart over every little mishap. It sucks for me that the emotional foundation and energy needed to do that over the long haul is a gift I don’t have. Can I do it for a little while? Absolutely! Nobody does interviews better than I do. And I dare anyone to be better short term lover than me. But after a while, my nerves get frayed, I feel like I’m selling my soul and something inside me just snaps. It happens over and over again, in shorter, more frequent intervals. It is so exhausting. Maybe what I need are those missing pieces of the me I never got to know. The me who, even though I lost my father just before my fifth birthday, had not then been torn away from my extended family and brought to America? How would my sexuality have developed without the interference of a grown man? And what if he hadn’t given me drugs at such an early age? Would my relationship with my mother have been different had she pressed charges against the person who raped her seventeen year-old daughter? Perhaps that might have helped me feel less worthless. Who knows, I could have had a retirement fund. Or a dog instead of a cat. 

Or maybe, at the very least, I would possess the emotional maturity to keep a job for more than ninety-six days.

 

It’s The American Way

One of my first memories of racism in America happened when I was in Jr High. My best friends were Karen and Bonnie, who lived on the other side of our New Jersey town and I was on my way to meet them.  They are both white. As my little Black self was walking down the street, a random white child rode by on a bike and called out, “Nigger!” in pretty much the same way you would shout a greeting to your neighbor. I quickly countered with, “Your mother’s a nigger!” and kept on walking to Bonnie’s house. There the three of us listened to Elton John, me for the first time, giggled about boys and ate pizza. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned that incident to Karen or Bonnie. I do, however, remember the feeling of confusion, anger and an uneasy bit of fear that hit me at the time. And I also remember thinking that I didn’t belong there on that street, on that side of town. Not that it was the first time I’d been called that, but it was damn sure the first time a white person had ever called me a nigger. It was a very strange thing to be so excited to see my friends but have to deal with some kid who looks just like they look curse my race and just keep on riding like it was nothing.

Now I am not going to pretend that Trinidad had no racism when I was growing up, but I will admit that I didn’t realize it was racism. You see, it wasn’t uncommon for us to call the Indians in our towns as coolies, or refer to my cousins who are mixed with Indian and Black as dougla. The Chinese storekeeper was a Chineyman and even if you weren’t from Syria, we called you a Syrian if you looked the part. To be honest, Trinidad as a whole is actually very color conscious, so much so that even in 2016 dark skinned people are still called blackie, or darkie. If you have lighter skin almost everybody will have called you reds before your first day at school. When tempers flare I’m sure Trinidad Indians are still referred to as blasted coolies and Blacks are cursed as being fuckin African niggers. So no, I am not going to lay claim to being from a color-blind little island in the sun. What I will say though is this.; you can be a coolie, a chineyman, a Syrian or a nigger in Trinidad, but when any of us land on American soil, we are Trinidadians first and foremost. All that other shit takes a back seat. As an example, unless you come from a certain amount of money and prestige, the majority of whites back home don’t mingle with non-whites, so in my world we hardly ever see them. Yep, racism and classism. But back when I was a Massage Therapist a white American lady came into the spa for a massage. Once she heard a very faint trace of my accent, the woman immediately dropped the white American façade and we became just two Trini women chatting it up. Still don’t believe me? Hang a Trinidadian flag on your rearview mirror and wait. Trinidadians of all hues be blowing their horns or stopping you in the parking lot to find out what part of the island you’re from. A few years ago at a traffic light, a male voice with a strong Trini accent yelled out from the car next to me, “Hey Trini, wha’appnin?” When I turned to answer back I was shocked to see a white, golden haired Trini guy with hazel eyes waving and smiling back at me. As I said, in my world I hardly ever see white Trinis. But at a red light in front of a Broward County mall, we were countrymen. Even if only for a moment.There’s an unmistakable pride we have and we gladly share it with all Trinidadians. Well, maybe except for Nicki Minaj.

Conversely, white Americans have never shown me that type of camaraderie overseas. Whether in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama or any of the other countries I have visited, upon hearing my American accent, not one single white person has ever asked me what state in America I was from or offered even so much as a smile of acknowledgement. As opposed to almost every Trini who, regardless of race or ethnicity, or which part of the world I am in, always wants to know, “Aye, which part a Trinidad yuh from?”, white Americans I have encountered overseas almost seem irritated when they see me and hear my American accent. It’s as though they’re trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing there. You know that feeling you get when you nehave go out of your way to avoid someone and you end up running into them at the store anyway? That’s how they look. And no, it is not my imagination. After living here for the past fifty years I recognize racists when I see them. The reality is that an unhealthy majority of white Americans don’t see Black or brown Americans as actual Americans who happen to be of a different color. They see them as non-white. Period. With all this talk of diversity and inclusion, the ugly truth is way too many whites don’t like the idea of bestowing the title of American on anyone who doesn’t look like them.

What kind of shit is that?

A Real Mother For Ya

 

Two weeks ago my mother celebrated her 83rd birthday. Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement, seeing as how I don’t know that my mother has actually “celebrated” anything in decades. Celebrations usually involves some level of mirth and merriment and my mother doesn’t do mirth. In honor of her birthday we took her to lunch at a pricey waterfront restaurant. Mommy sat mumbling that her actual birthday had been three days earlier, no one was paying attention to her and therefore refused to eat the shrimp dish she ordered. For the record, the shrimp was huge, very fresh and delicious. Don’t judge me. My mother always told me not to waste good food. As I sat across the table from her, I watched my mother try to get herself worked up into a state and I wondered for the hundredth time whether she was aware of how much most of my family dreaded spending time with her. And if she knew, how did that make her feel. Does she think we are ungrateful wretches who don’t appreciate the sacrifices she made while raising us as a single mother in a foreign country? When she sees us laughing while sharing cell phone pictures and jokes she’s not privy to, is there a part of her that feels any joy at what she has accomplished through her offspring or does she view us as just some more people who have used her and no longer have a place for her in their lives?  If someone had taken a picture, like the one my niece the self-proclaimed selfie queen took, they would have seen a well-dressed, elderly woman surrounded by her smiling family. A closer look may have revealed a woman who looked slightly irritated and confused. But what the picture wouldn’t show is the emotional hell that sweet little woman with the sing-song Caribbean accent has unleashed over the years.

An iPhone could never capture the fact that this same woman refused to press charges against my ex-boyfiend after he raped me when I was seventeen years old. Why? Because she didn’t want to upset his grandmother. Besides, as she told the investigating officer, he couldn’t possibly have raped me because I had had sex with him before and had gotten pregnant. When I pressed her on the incident years later she responded that she figured I was just mad at him and had made the whole thing up! Samsung’s best Galaxy would not be able to  reveal that after my son’s father walked out on us, refused to have any relationship with our child and never paid a dime of child support, my mother routinely ‘reminded’ her young grandson that the reason he didn’t have a father in his life is because I had kicked the man out and was keeping him away. Years later we still remember how, at my brother’s wedding, my mother left the church immediately after the ceremony with head held high and eyes looking straight ahead. She very quickly made her way to towards the car, causing me to run after her (do you have any idea how hard it is to run in a fucking black velvet 1990’s bridesmaid dress, in the hot Florida sun?) and ask her to go back to the church for the family pictures. God and I were the only ones who saw the smirk on her face when she informed me that nobody had mentioned anything to her about taking pictures. My mother refused to go back into the church until my brother, in exasperation, left his new bride and in-laws in the church and came out to her. Only then did she allow herself to be led back into the church, all the while looking like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Well played, mother. Well played. My youngest sister got pregnant in her senior year of high school and she told me our mother would literally banish her, Cinderella style, to the back of the house whenever company came over. The poor thing wasn’t allowed to come out until they left. Several years ago when the doctors didn’t think she would live, I spent four to five hours a day at the hospital with her. I would leave drained after listening to the ranting and raving. How did my mother show her gratitude? By refusing to speak to me. She would literally turn her whole emaciated body and face the wall when I entered the room. But even though my friends and family told me that spending so much time with her was toxic, I continued to go. And thanks in large part to her skill at knowing exactly which of my sister’s insecurity buttons to push, I no longer have a brother in-law. The years have seen her throw away friends over imagined slights and as a result, she has none left. Mommy tried to evict my mentally challenged cousin from the only home the woman ever known, a place my mother had no intention of ever living in, and she has dragged numerous family members into court on various charges. Okay, I will admit that some of my relatives are crooks and deserved it, so I’ll giver her a pass on those fuckers.

Now the same unhappy, complaining woman who screwed up my childhood is an eighty-three year-old woman who is suddenly frail and losing her memory. The foul-mouthed mother who constantly told me I would never amount to shit and that I was so lazy I wouldn’t make a good prostitute (I was ten years-old at the time), is the person I am now having to take care of. My mother calls me several times a week because I am the only one of her four children who will actually hold a conversation with her for more than twenty minutes. When I go to visit, I stay for hours because she has to one else to spend time with. And. I. Hate. It! I hate it because I don’t want to be the one she leans on all the time. I am pissed because I want to curse at her the way she cursed at me, and the way her other children curse at her today. It aggravates me when she still treats me like I don’t matter. My mother will actually call me at my job because she doesn’t want to disturb my brother. What the fuck? I’m at work! Yes I have a job, too. It irrittates me when I attempt to work through some of the issues from the past and she gives me the, “I don’t remember that” routine. Often I wonder if she really is sliding into dementia, or if her memory ‘failure’ is another one her ploys to get attention? No, I am not proud of myself for these thoughts but over the years I have seen this woman act her ass off so no, I don’t trust her. If her memory is really slipping what I want to know is, why is my mother being allowed to forget all the fucked up things she has done while I’m stuck spending my life trying to overcome the damage? It frustrates me to no end that, after all she has done to break up my relationships, lie on me and verbally abuse me, a part of me continues to feel guilty for not wanting to be around her. And because of that guilt, I spend more time with my mother than I really want to. She has trained me well.

Among my family it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that I’ll be the one who sticks by our mother and looks after her until the end. After all, both my sisters live out of state with no plans to return to Florida and my brother is married. I on the other hand only have a fat cat to look after. But please tell me where it is written, besides in my own head, that I owe my mother the rest of my life? Hasn’t she taken enough away from me? Besides, who’s to say I won’t die before she does? Hell, at the rate she’s going, she could bury us all! Yeah I know I only have one mother but shit, I also only have one life and I am just starting to enjoy it. It has taken me years, make that decades, of prayer, therapy and medication to get me where I am today. So forgive me if I don’t want to go backwards. Now I am sitting here mentally preparing to drive the twenty-five miles to her house on this Mother’s Day and already dreading it. Not because I think she’s going to do something awful, but simply because I just don’t feel like going. I don’t want to leave my house. Period. But since my brother is hosting friends from out of town,  I know he won’t be stopping by to see her and I feel like one of us should be there. Then again, what makes me the designated hitter? My mother has four children, not just me. Maybe I need to take a step back sometimes. My own son lives across the country and I have to make do with a phone call from him today. If that’s good enough for me, why do I feel she deserves more than I do? Alright then, a phone call it is.  Besides, as the late, great musical genius Prince once sang, she’s never satisfied anyway.

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Some Humpty Dumpty Shit

Back in February, I took what I thought was a little tumble at work. Two months later, I was still in physical therapy. At first I was pissed because my coworker, whose demeanor suggests she thinks her job is beneath her, decided our new workspace was insufficient for her needs so the floor became an extension of her desk. It was on one of her piles of paper that I zigged when I should have apparently zagged. All I remember is me yelling, “Shit!” as I made my way down while grasping at non-existent objects in an attempt to break my fall. For weeks prior to busting my ass, I had been extremely cautious when walking away from my desk because the only way out of my little corner was through her piles of papers on the floor. I swear, it’s like the woman doesn’t realize that it’s 2016 which means it’s okay to scan files instead of collecting every sheet of paper that crosses her path. But I was too irritated by her to suggest she move them. And that stubborness is what has me mad at myself. Instead of sulking around and allowing myself to be inconvenienced by her paper carpet, I should have just found an acceptable way to tell her to move her shit out of my way. Had I done that, my weekly schedule wouldn’t have been filled with trips to physical therapy and MRI’s. Instead, I suffered in psuedo self-righteous silence while making a point to sigh loudly every time I had to pass by while trying not to kill myself on a sea of paper. Too bad it never occurred to me that one day I would be miscalulate just how far out she had really spread her little arc of foolishness. The other person who earned a piece of my indignation and whom I believe played a part in my downfall (see what I did there?), is our Director. A self-proclaimed passive-aggressive, this ineffective little man is deathly afraid to confront anyone he thinks is higher up on the food chain than he is. Which basically means he barely confronts anyone but me. But I’ll save that for another post. Because paper-on-the-floor woman and her attorney husband are apparently long-term donors to our organization, our ‘boss’ would rather bite off his own tongue than use it to ask her to keep her shit on her desk. Or work a full day’s schedule. Instead he, like me, said nothing to her and I ended up flat on my ass with a torn ankle ligament, pulled back muscles with low back sprain and a medial meniscus tear.

Bet I’m not feeling so self righteous now.

Of course, because I’m almost fifty-six, the worker’s compensation doctors have been quick to point out that my injuries may have been brought on by age and degeneration. While I’m sure that’s part of it, age and degeneration in and of themselves aren’t the reasons I feel like crap all of a sudden. I feel like crap all of a sudden because I fell on a pile of fucking papers strewn all over my office floor! And the reason I fell was because the bitch I work with was too self-absorbed to move them. I fell because the idiot I work for was too much of a wimp to tell his employee her floor desk was a hazard. But mostly I fell because I was so busy being pissed off at the two of them and hating my life, that I failed to to do what I needed to do. Namely, tell that wretch to push her damn papers to her side of the floor. It goes without saying that I was in a hurry when my feet slipped out from under me that day since I’m pretty sure nobody ever falls when they’re taking their sweet time. However, I am also old, er, an older person and overweight. Okay, fat. Add these factors together and it’s no shock to modern medicine that my body hasn’t quite healed. But it’s a shock to me. My mind is having a hard time wrapping itself around the fact that two months later I’m still having issues. I am surprised and upset that now when I so much as climb one flight of stairs, my back throbs with a pain that forces me to stop moving dead in my tracks. And because my ankle folded under my weight as I went sprawling, I am shocked and dismayed to find out, as I did today when I went to pick her up, that my 83 year-old mother and I now wear the same style of orthopedic shoes for proper arch support. How fucked up is that? As we say back home in Trinidad, I’ve reached where I’m going! While I don’t mean to sound dramatic or maudlin, I believe my body has finally started to give out. Well, maybe not give out, but at the very least it’s in a decline. A decline that has no reverse gear. You know how when a car has been in an accident, even though they replace the transmission, repair the dings and dents out of the bumper and give it a new coat of pain, it never really runs the same as before? That’s how I feel, as though it won’t matter if I lose twenty pounds, get knee surgery and have acupuncture on my back every week, just like Humpty damn Dumpty, I’m never going to be whole again.

Isn’t that some shit?

 

 

It’s All Fun and Games Until…

This past weekend I went on a party cruise. And by cruise I mean four hours of drifting aimlessley around Biscayne Bay. By party I mean bumping to the sounds of Soca and drinking as much alcohol as you can find. Normally I can’t stand going into Miami at night but music, alcohol and a yacht? How could I say no? Besides, I wasn’t the one driving. By the way, if you’re not familiar with Soca music, just know the theme of every song is basically the same: Drinking rum, partying and grinding. And it’s not called grinding, we call it winin’ (pronounced why-nin) and at it’s best it’s what twerking wants to be when it grows up. In my humble opinion, nobody can wine like Trinidadians,  it’s in the DNA. All the Trinis I know can wine except for me. But that’s because I was raised in New Jersey. Well that and the fact that I have zero rythmn. Guess that has more to do with me than it does New Jersey. At any rate the combination of the fast tempo of the music, the West Indian culture of always having a good time and the constant presence of alcohol creates an atmosphere that can sometimes resemble a musical orgy. Because I love my Soca so much, I have to admit that it took me years to take an objective look at it and recognize how many of the songs today can seem carelessly mysogonistic at times. But I’m not here to bash Soca as a genre. I mean sure the lyrics are sexually suggestive and they can get a bit mundane, after all can you really not come up with anything more creative than, “Wine on me, wine on me, wine on me”? But it’s part of our culture and if nothing else, I am a proud Trini. However something happened on the cruise that left a bad taste in my mouth. A taste that doesn’t make me feel so proud of the behavior that often accompanies my national music. 

As soon as the yacht left the harbor I did what I normally do when I go out with other women; I leave them and go off to explore. Of course we were on a small yacht, so there wasn’t that much to explore. But since the ladies I went with were content to stand in the middle of the floor looking like sexy, well-dressed statues, I had to at least try. I quickly realized there was a large group of people up on the third deck and it sounded like they were having a good time so, obviously, I headed in that direction. Hey, just because I usually stay home with my cat doesn’t mean I don’t like to have fun. I soon found myself near a small group who was out celebrating an engagement and since they were much more fun than the people I went with, their spot became my base for the rest of the night. One of the young women in the group apparently didn’t understand the importance of pacing your liquor intake and was already quite tipsy before an hour had even passed. Before long, she was out running up to random guys , twirling around, doing a little bump and grind on them and then dancing off to find another partner. After which she would come running back to our spot laughing. It was cute and absurd and everyone watching was cracking up, including the guys she ran off from, because we all knew it was being done in fun and she meant no harm. Later one of the guys she had danced up on decided to come over to where we were. By that time she had already vomitted twice over the side and was so out of it she could barely keep her head up. The guy started doing a frenzied dance on her that resembled dry humping more than anything else. Initially, she laughed and made a weak attempt to push him off but she was too far gone to put up much of a protest so she just kind of stayed put as he continued to thrust his pelvis into her. He was as happy as he could be with himself! He kept looking at her and smiling as though they were just another couple out there winin’ to the music and having a blast. But looking at her I didn’t see the young woman who had been happily dancing her way through the crowd earlier. All I saw was someoone who looked like a drunken fly in a spider’s web. Her smile was gone and she looked lost.

Taking in the scene, everything in me wanted to cuss him out and make him get off of her. It felt like I was watching a rape in progress. Suddenly my throat got tight and my buzz went away. The look in her eyes made me want to cry because I was invountarily taken back to all the times I had needed to be saved from myself. All the times I had gotten myself in a horrible situation that nobody would help me out of. But instead of saying anything, I looked at her friends to see what they were going to do. After all I rationalized, I didn’t know these people. Didn’t know their names or even if they knew the dry humping dude. But her friends just sat there shaking their heads at the guy yet saying nothing. Eventually I leaned over to her, and asked loudly, “Are you comfortable with this?” She turned and gave a me a wide-eyed stare but before I could figure out what was on her mind, the guy looked over at me, moved away from her and left and she gave me a little thank you grin.

Once the cruise ended, we waved our good-byes and went back to our lives.

But not me because I am here reliving the whole scene. It’s like I can’t get it out of my mind. The look on his face as he kept jamming his pelvis into her as she sat semi dazed and the way he placed both of his hands on the railing behind her in effect trapping her while making himself at home between her legs, as though he owned her. I can still see how young and uncertain she looked as if she wasn’t quite sure if it was part of the experience and she should just take it or if she should stand up for herself. Mostly though, she looked like she thought she was getting what she deserved. After all, her own friends didn’t try to get him off of her or help her out of what was obviously an uncomfortable situation for her. Oh God, even now the memory irritates me. You see, I know it’s not this man’s fault that what he did triggered some old shit in me. But still I blame him for behaving in a way that could trigger them. Is that fair? Probably not yet it’s how I feel. Maybe he didn’t know that even winin’ has rules. Four days later and I  have no answers to the questions swirling around in my head. Like should I have said or done something sooner? Was his race a factor in my being so bothered? Perhaps I ought to have none nothing and let them figure it out, after all they were both well over the age of thirty. Was I out of place by not letting her friends come to her resuce? Did I allow my personal shit to get in the way and overreact to something that was really harmless? Worst of all, why am I still replaying this in my mind? Why can’t I seem to let it go?

Oh boy, my therapist is going to get an earful in our next session.