NORMAN VINCENT NOT SO APPEALING

It started with Norman Vincent Peale and his Power of Positive Thinking book, which came out in 1952 and was a precursor to the Positive Affirmation Movement. My relative bought it and believed. In doing so, at first, she was just ignoring the bad and promoting the good. Seeing the glass half full.

She had made it through the Great Depression as a teenager who had to quit school and went to work cleaning houses. No shame in that. Now, distanced, she stood high on a pedestal, a Greek Goddess. Hera. Enthroned in her kitchen where she gave dollops of wise advice the same way she plopped buttery mashed potatoes on my plate, next to the stuffed cabbage, when I visited.

I ate.

But moving forward, like President Donald Trump, she had taken to talking in the present about things as if they were true. She took to condemning those, including me, for living outside her philosophy of life, for questioning, and for discerning the truth. The real truth. 

My relative became more dramatic as she aged. She told her stories, in which she starred, over and over again. The stories co-starred her husband and children who worshipped her.

I was so sure she had more stories that one day I called her and mentioned my father told me they'd gone hungry during the Great Depression.

"It never happened!" She yelled into the phone. She went on, going opposite of everything he said. I believed him. Not her.

My father had so many stories about things he'd done for food.

I used to believe everything she said.

One lie after another.

They piled up like rocks on a corpse.

Once she lied to others long enough, she believed her lies to be truth.

C 2021

WHY CHURCH? I

The day I turned 18 I quit church. I never regretted it, felt guilty about it, or looked for another. It had been so over for me for a couple years. My parents, who lived life around the church, perhaps surprisingly, never tried to change my mind. I was an adult and my sins were my own.  

I knew the reasons why. I thought women should be allowed to be priests. I was for contraception and, though I couldn't imagine doing so myself, legal abortion. There were too many pregnant girls in high school. Sexism in churches was an affront to my sensibility. I knew the so called World's Great Religions were Not Great for women.

I disliked several members of that church, in particular my schoolgirl friend who acted out religiosity on Sundays, so prayerful and humble with her hands folded and a scarf over her bowed head, but who had become a phoney. Puberty had turned her into an actress. She'd even honed a high fake voice.

There was a woman just the opposite too, a talking, laughing, attention seeker who one Christmas wore actual dangling Christmas bulbs in her pierced ears- one red - one green- who disturbed prayerful peace and would arrive a smidgen late and go down the center isle rather than settle her haunches in the back row.

And slutty altar boys. Sending meaningful gazes to girls they liked between movements.

These people were to me just the more notable annoyances. It troubled me that church or not, when you got to know them, so many people in the church were not nice people.

As well, the Age of Aquarius had begun (or so some of us thought) and many of my artist friends were spirituality exploring and experimental. One of them would tell me about her meditative experiments staring into a candle flame. Another declared herself a witch though I realize now there are many definitions for that lable and there wasn't any reason to believe her other than, as a friend, you believed whatever she said. I also had a friend who had lured me away from going to church by inviting me over to look through magazines like Creem, the pages full of photos of cute British rockers. (She joined a cult during her Freshman year in college and is still in it.)

Mainly I was bored with the routine of church. And the Obligation.

In recent years I tried to reevaluate my aversion to church -any church. Through the years I had been, at times earnestly, a spiritual explorer. I think this is very much Californian. I read books. Stacks of them. (I so miss the Bodhi Tree bookstore.) Once in a great while I attended - sometimes observing, sometimes participating, in a service or ritual - Christmas Eve Mass at a Mission, a Unitarian world wide meditation for peace, a party a Christian friend -who told me You Gotta Get God - took me to that turned into a sort of circle dance in which the woman, whose home it was in, began, in a teacherly way, to turn it into a ritual and call out the names of Goddesses from many cultures to "attend." (Something I've since heard is not advisable.) If this didn't bother him -someone raised Mormon, why should it bother me?

Over time I questioned myself. Had all those years of religious education (some would say indoctrination) really given me my values? Had my family of origin? What about the friends I cared about along the way? 

Ultimately, I'm glad for the foundation but I see it was me - learning and evaluating - who came to think as I do - to have my values - and I'm not so Liberal overall.

As a child, I did not experience being supported as a human being - not really - I could not conform to expectations. There was too much "Yours is not to ask the reason why. When I say Jump, you say How High?" I was always asking why. 

That was my upbringing.

Fast forwarding to my more recent life, I realized very few people I had associated with went to church, almost none identified as Christian, even the ones raised Catholic had abandoned believing or living those values. Friends had been raised as "nothing."

I had a lot of materialistic, success driven people in my life and, considering how few were self made, as dependent on parents most were, snobs.

I had been offended when a bunch of Unitarians started talking against the Pope at a Thanksgiving dinner I attended. 

I had been bombarded with hate at another event when a self styled psychic teaching A Course in Miracles and who claimed to have been raised Catholic started spewing woppers against Catholicism. It was cheap of her. I spoke up and got slammed. 

When a friend visiting LA saw that Mexican appearing women were on their knees praying wholeheartedly at the outdoor mosaic of Blessed Mother Mary in the historic Oliveira Street area, and she loudly announced with disgust "Who even believes this shit anymore?" I could barely believe her lack of consideration.

Had I been too hard in my thinking about the annoying members of my long ago church? My mom, not a person who explained much, gave me this bit of wisdom."Church isn't for saints, it's for sinners."

In all those years of trying to understand human existence, if there is meaning in life, our reason for being here, how to be moral and ethical and still succeed, how to be happy, I was never an athiest but surely agnostic. I wanted proof. Belief is an overused word. I'm using it correctly in saying I wanted to believe but could not believe without proof. 

I felt that I didn't want anyone praying for me because they were either trying to convert me or basically were unwilling to be practical. Praying could even be Black Magic.

Another thing I did not want to do is join with anti-Catholic, Protestant churches. My grandparents, parents, and myself all suffered from Anti-Catholicism and -they'll deny it -Masonry. When someone left The Church back in the day we might not shun them but we were wary. There are still many lies about Catholicism that are used by Protestant missionaries such as that Catholics don't read the Bible. Once I was told Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible! I've heard Catholics were all going to eternal hell. I can make a long list of self-called "Christians" who I wish would go to hell for the things they've said or done to me. Based on them, I felt I would not want to be called Christian.

I did not and still do not understand the emphasis and scholarly competition in literary interpretation. I got screwed over by one of these "scholars" who turned in an Academy Award worthy performance and lied when I took him to court to get paid.

My question became how many real Christians even exist? Membership in a Church requires participation and tithing. It requires wanting to be there and among the others. Are there people in that club who will accept you? Will they help you if you need help in a practical way? Membership in a church is no proof of being Christian. But maybe it's good for networking? Ah, does being a Christian still require not being a Feminist?

My first foray into checking out a church in recent years happened accidentally. I went there looking for a minister to discuss a person who I understood to be a member there. This person was harassing me - moving and stealing things on my porch. I thought he could talk to him. The minister advised me that the person had been thrown out due to crazy behavior on the premises. However I was invited to attend. I did, weekly, for several weeks. I liked their loud, joyful singing. I liked their fellowship. I liked that I could take my dog! This was a small and very liberal church that greatly believed in prayer. Women could be ministers. But I couldn't keep going because I moved.

I next attended a Bible Study over several months and only one service (because I couldn't take my dog) at a more literal conservative church because I met a woman in a computer lab who was writing a book and she said it was a good place. While I enjoyed learning more about women in the Old Testament /history and admired that the pastor was fearless when it came to telling husbands to straighten up when their wives came crying, these people were sure eternity in Hell awaited Oprah, Shirley Maclaine, and just about anyone into the New Age Movement, thought homosexually and the like also meant Hell, and forget feminism - these were women who let their husbands support them financially and felt it was their right. It took a while for all this to come out, for me to get it. I liked some of these women while feeling none of them understood my life. I did some volunteer work while there with them. They were highly Republican and involved in missionary work. I began to see that I didn't want more people on earth to become so condemning. I gave prayer and daily reading a good try for many months. I became frightened of the fact that there were so many people like them in this world.

Lastly, I, without joining again, got involved in another Christian group that considers itself interfaith (though barely) with an emphasis on volunteering, especially in the community. At this point my thinking was that The Bible and Christianity are so much Western culture. I was born into this culture. Do I need to be reacquainted?

Ministers including women from various Protestant churches were involved but time proved no Catholics were. I'd begun to think this place was a decent fit for me. By putting in time I realized not so. They can't do anything without board meetings. It's not a cult but the board is a clique, a clique that doesn't do much to attract or keep volunteers and ministers who are statistics fiends but do little to attract members and are always looking for grants and big donors instead.  

It's time to go it alone again, I think.

Threes a charm.

However, I have some advice. When you meet someone new in your life, try to find out what they value. Do they hold beliefs against your being? Are they empathic and kind? Are they honest in their dealings with you? Or opportunists and users? Do they have a spiritual or religious view that's compatible with yours? In general, are they loving and giving? If they pray do they ask you first if it's ok? Will they pray for what you want or need or a complete makeover of who you are and what you stand for?

Will that person be the friend who is there through success and failure? Or a turncoat who treats you like a contagious disease when you fail? Or who can't bring themselves to congratulate you when you win? 

How does he or she treat women? Is there basic respect? How are they raising their children?

These are my thoughts today after researching What To Expect From A Minister.

C 2021

Slightly edited for clarity.

ON THE TIGHTROPE

 

THE DIRT ON THE BASEMENT STAIRS

She was my favorite friend. There is no one else on earth I wish more to talk to about what happened with Trixie. Trixie and her unenviable marriage that broke her spirit might even be an awful welcome tale to her. She's one of several of my friends who are serial monogamists but into their third marriage or long term relationship. Trixie stayed in rather than have the stigma of divorce. These others never have the stigma of affairs because their affairs lead to marriages and long term relationships.

But the dirt on her basement stairs was the end of a conversation and a friendship. It was the point where the thought that my friend was actually mentally ill and that her marriage had broken because it was the both of them.  

Then I thought they had been on best behavior during my visits, which I'd cherished. The thought that she was Hysterical, Obsessive-Compulsive, and had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, set into my Knowing like a heads-up penny in just poured cement. That notion set and I can't seem to back up into my previous notion that what was happening was all her husband's fault.

Time honored wisdom is that one never makes a commentary on someone else's marriage. You stay out. It's none of your business. That no one really understands what makes people attract. That marriage is a mystery. That people must "settle." That all couples argue.

Oh, and one other mythology: that there's something wrong with you if you aren't coupled at any cost.

I was eager to like husband number one. Number one turned out to be a wife beater whose surprise attacks grew more frequent and vicious the closer she got to college graduation.

Hadn't she learned from her mistakes and waited a long time before remarrying? Hadn't she lived with husband number two first? Hadn't they planned their children? Wasn't he supportive of her career, willing to transfer wherever she was sent as she climbed the corporate ladder? Wasn't he always sweet to me when I visited, making me welcome, calling me an honorary auntie? 

And now he was doing no shows when it was his weekend to have the children? And dragging her into financial ruin? And he'd been cheating?

I started to have dreams about them. In one she was crying in desperation and I woke deeply worried, not knowing what I could say or do, feeling her pain in my chest. In another he convinced me that I believed her marketing, her PR. That she was a bull-shitter. I believed him.

She told me he called her "crazy."

Oh, the old "crazy woman" defense men use, I thought.

She said he was crazy.

But then I remembered the time I sent her a photocopy and she was a bit indignant that it had dusted off, that the copy wasn't pristine. It seemed she was affronted.

The time we were out shopping and she assured me that it wasn't that she couldn't afford a pair of distressed jeans, she just saw no point in clothing that didn't look new. 

The way she pointed when I finished a fast food soda and set the empty drink cup with plastic cap and straw down into the immaculate SUV cup holder and she said "Get that out of here!" She meant open the window and throw it out as we sped down the road. I did it.

When her sister moved in, she said she'd have to move out because she kept spilling things.

Her sister said, "She always has to have her way."

Her brother liked him.

The nanny quit.

I called on a Wednesday night and the children were screaming in the background. She said it was a bad time.

I called on a Saturday. As if I should have known, she said, a hairdresser was on the way over and would be there all afternoon, cutting everyone's hair. It sounded like luxury. "I'll call next Saturday," I offered. 

"No. We get our hair done every Saturday!"

I imagined the hair trimmed a sixteenth of an inch each week, no split ends, to never grow out of a style.

Her heels, reheeled every week.

I was calling with a three hour time difference to consider. Did she think I was a psychic who knew when to call and when not to?

She said she didn't want to email because she had too much of that at work. A letter, she said, was too much to read. 

Then I called once more. She answered her land line. She was hysterical. She started screaming at the children. To me she said, "They got dirt on the basement steps and I just scrubbed them."

C 2021

Notes: The same perfectionism that was a characteristic of her relationship with her secretary and clients had served her well for the first twenty years of her career. I always thought that after she had children her sexist bosses no longer saw her as career driven while they had wives who were stay at home mothers. I had also felt that her husband was unwilling to be a stay at home dad but I also knew she had pushed him to make more money. She had decided that her next husband would have to make more money than she and that she would only "deal" with people who had earned Master's Degrees. I see this as rigidity and snobbery. A person who is out of control inside sometimes tries to micromanage their environment and relationships.

Extra Note: March 30th. A sign that someone has NPD is that they think the world revolves around them and others should have an intuitive understanding of their needs and wants and serve to fulfill them. 

 

INTO A BIDEN ERA

The Trump era has felt like chaos to me from the beginning. Because of his hyperbole, I feel it may take some time to adjust to President Biden's more sedate, statesman way of speaking. Oh does he and do we have one hell of a mess to deal with! Covid-19 is the biggest problem. It's a world wide problem. Tied in with a closed down economy, I fear all that comes with hunger.

I know that this country has some rich people who are quietly giving to address the need for food. There's also many commoners who have been volunteering to pick up, bag or box, and deliver food, ready it for distribution, and are change. 

A recent survey of local food resources I did showed that local grocers had raised prices on everything to what the market will have to bear ($1.50 for a small can of beans from an American brand), that there were shortages at food banks, that a grab and go lunch at a church was cancelled long ago, as were lunches at local senior centers. However, there were a couple food distributions going on that I hadn't heard about and they're at branches of YMCA and YWCA!

I decided to volunteer for a couple hours just to see how it's done. The boss said to expect lots of produce. A handful of us put together about 10 "homeless" bags and then about 25 bags for those presumed to be able to cook. There was a lot of produce. There was also a generous donation of Trader Joe's prepared salads expiring that day.

There was such an excess of not yet ripe organic tomatoes, which the boss said would end up in a "landfill" that volunteers were told to take some home. So today I'm going to make a homemade tomato soup from the dozen I took and eat it, hopefully in a relaxing manner, while watching the swearing in ceremony.

A couple hours in the hot sun with rubber gloves dripping with sweat, and I was at my limits of participation. But I had to wonder. If this produce were more reasonable in price, couldn't more people have their pride in buying it? And, are stores taking tax deductions based on high retail prices?

As I prepared to go, people on foot with carts and people in vehicles - some SUVs of recent make - began to line up.

C 2021

DENIAL IS A BIG ONE

 

TRIXIE OUT OF HER BIND

Mum, Catholic, said, "You should never hate a person. Hate what they do."

I failed. 

//

It never occurred to Trixie that her friendship to me was lousy. That she expected beyond reason. That I was exhausted with caring and that my exhaustion was contagious. 

She had the escape route few women had. An excellent job. You might even use the term career. Luck and and talent. Not education. She went through her life proclaiming, "You don't need to go to college to do that." It was her brag. Her conceit. 

Most people do.

In my innocent loyalty, I did not realize she was jealous. That she thought all women were competitive with each other. That nothing mattered more to her than the admiration of men. That she saw other women as enemies more so than friends. That she was a Lady Against Women. And that as Lady Boss she was despised.

Teenage Trixie told our young artist crowd, "Those feminists are crazy." Her eyes flashed at the eyes of the most macho, sexist man among us, a man seething with masculinity, dark and handsome as a matinee idol. A flirt. His ego burnished.

Walking along the streets in a university town with just one other man, a plain one, who'd been there, he said, "So you're a feminist. You're feminine though."

//

The literature teacher asked, "In this poem when you read "the fog came in on cats feet" what does he mean?

//

Trixie and me on a single girls beach vacation. "Next summer I hope I'll be here with my husband," she said even though she wasn't dating anyone.

But then, in those years when post college people with a couple years of job started finding The Right One, when Right Ones were everywhere, she did too. He asked her to marry him on their sixth date. And she dropped out of my life as suddenly, too busy in her year long engagement to care about our friendship. Only to call me crying - long distance - that her mum was against the marriage and trying to stop the wedding.

Angrily her mum said to me, "I wasn't born yesterday." 

//

How many fingers have I raised?

 //

The wedding was just family. I wasn't invited.

I sent a gift.

//

Her husband was uncommonly timelessly handsome from every angle. She was healthy like a horse. He made good money. She made good money. He invested hers. He made purchases without her knowledge or permission. He took off on weekends that didn't include her. He left her alone and vulnerable. He accused her of giving him a rash.

Her calls to me became more frequent. We stayed on longer. I never avoided her calls. But I began to realize that each call was her reportage of an affair she was having or, I should say, an affair she imagined she was having. A man at her job was the recipient of her flashing eyes. Everyone at the office could see. And some of them admired the man for, well, getting into Lady Boss's pants. That was his brag. His conceit.

Every call was her begging me to give her small hope by seeing small details with an optimism I was not feeling. I rewrote and retold her story to her several times.

Another friend told me I shouldn't take her calls. That I was an enabler. A what?

Long-distance, I realized. Her husband wasn't just using her for her money. He was using her for cover. He had thrown her to another man while he lived a secret life. She kept saying her husband was "perfectly good" but he needed - I wasn't there - to be with another man. Married, he passed.

I hated him.

//

She became Obsessed with the man at work. Whatever had happened once, they weren't dating. It was as simple as that. Bad boy of the office. Recipient of flash.

He smiled because he was the type of person who did, especially when it came to his Lady Boss. Some of the women there laughed at her behind her back when they thought of the way she comported herself around the office, imagining him - a lump - on top of Mrs. Smarty Pants.

Was I an enabler? 

One day she introduced me to the lump. Unsightly.

He made a pass at me.

He was disgusting.

She hated me for that.

//

Note: Trixie never got out of the bind she was in - her marriage - while she was alive. She continued to live a lie because she didn't want her mother to say, "I Told You So." Before she died, she told people she was a writer and a blogger. Just like me.

FRIDGE LIVES

Ok,  this made me laugh out loud. It's not sick or twisted. It's a social commentary but also fun. The unfortunate discarded fridge appeared down the street from a friend's house in a spot that has become "the dump" in her neighborhood, that place where furniture and mattresses and all sorts of garbage waits and waits and waits for pickup. The fridge with this sign was there for weeks. Yea, my friend put on a frowny face and admonished me, but really, DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE SO DAMN SERIOUS?

After all, this is a time when a restaurant put a sign out stating. FREE TOILET PAPER WITH ORDER. The order was a $39.99 ham and cabbage dinner for two!

C 2021 photo and text Christine Trzyna

MARAUDING MENTALLY ILL

Back in the day.

Before diagnostic psychobabble became part of talk. Before you became wary of saying you were feeling "blue." When the blues were best treated by listening to the blues.

Before consciousness included realization that your best friend suffered their thinking.

A delight with morning dew and sunlight spun in the rose bush between thorns and bud.

Me - the fly who realized and wiggled loose.

That day when his friend who knew him since high school dismissed your concerns about his pain by saying, "But - don't you know?! He's just really really really neurotic!" 

That day you just got a clue. 

She had a decade on you. 

Sentimental with childhood, no one told you.

Where exactly is that point where really really really neurotic and mentally ill meet? When the day you realized you lost a friend along the way?

When saying someone was "crazy" was said with a smile, a laugh, even a hold-your-belly because it was meant as a compliment. When "crazy" was "genius" and innovation. When you respected unique individuals. No one was on trial for "culture appropriation" either. So what if they wanted to do something with their hair?! It was their hair. Crazy, man!

But, now you know more. Too much. Some would say better. Now you can use words like narcissistic personality disorder, self-harming, or clinically depressed with knowing and sadly, abandon. 

He lived all those labels and more. As the years went by he got really really really really really neurotic.

He tore himself up on a nightly basis. He spent hours looking in mirrors. He went into a zone while stretching his legs before a run. Where are you? Come back! Come back!

He was always running late and drove like a hellion, even the blind curves through the canyon. Scared the hell out of you a few times. 

Had to chase young girls. Really young girls. Really really young girls... Sunset Strip. Told them he was a music producer. Leaned into his dream of being a Rock Star. He passed on first and second look. Told too young girls who could believe their eyes... Went home alone to dismantle.

Did not see his aging.

Women as props.

Women as compensation.

//

Being around these people makes you sick too, so you make your escape. That's what you do. You're afraid their mental illness is a contamination. Cooties. Associating with that person means something about you - you mean girl.

How did you acquire all the clutter of mentally ill friends? Do you hoard mentally ill friends? Remember when you thought you were loyal and faithful rather than an enabler? 

//

Went to visit his parents. His mother you always liked. Tears springing from her eyes as she said, "I hope it's not mental illness." 

"I think it is," you said, quietly but sure.

Obsessive-Compulsive. Self hater. Something at the core.

C 2021 Christine Trzyna

Note: The last couple days living through history; The siege of the United States Capitol to disrupt the political process of confirming Joseph Biden as the next President, the fervent discussion of President Donald Trump's mental health, and the effect of the Covid-19 plague and economic disrepair, has me thinking about mental illness. In discussion with a friend, we agreed that we don't think of depression as mental illness. It is most often common and appropriate. There is a great deal of pain to process and a Dark Night of the Soul can be Spirituality Enlightening. We don't think a mere six weeks of feeling blue should lead to medication. We do think self harm and suicidal thoughts should require a psychiatric consultation. In this series of free writing I'm exploring mental illness and friendship.

TAKE IT

 

GOOD RIDANCE 2020 : TALKING TO STRANGERS

I wish I could make that sentiment personal. Listening to KFI, which I rarely do, the polls suggest most Americans think 2020 was the worst year they ever experienced. 

Actually, I've experienced worse and the flip of a page on a calendar isn't going to change the facts. California, in particular Southern, is in a plague. Bodies are piling up. Ambulances are turned away. Economic conditions are dire. Those of us who care not to die and care about others becoming sick and dying are staying home, even if that is a sacrifice. We don't want to add to the commotion or accidentally need to go to an emergency room.

I met a person from Croatia who was close to her American Citizenship but, due to Trump sourced policy changes, expects another year and a half wait. "I'm afraid," she said. "Everything that's happening here, it's just like before war in my country."

She mentioned the divisive politics, the senseless violence, the lawlessness, the looting, and so on.

How bad is it for me? 

I've lost track of what day of the week it is a couple times because I'm no longer within the rhythm of the week. 

You may have experienced this if you've worked Monday to Friday, used Saturday for errands and social life, and then Sunday for hikes, museums, getting out. You loose your job and you still keep to the same schedule, perhaps using the weekdays for work search related activities. You still think of Wednesday as "over the hump" and Fridays as TGIF.

I also sense that there's a rhythm to a city and you feel it. Traffic to and from work weekdays, a change on weekends to a slower pace, so that slacking off during the week can make you feel guilty that you're not doing much, but not so guilty on the weekends, and not at all on New Years when "noone" is working.

In Covid-19 (19-20-21) there are so many people working long hours, weekends when they don't normally, who are fighting this war against a virus, you can feel awful about not getting out there to help in some way. Yet it is not advisable.

I feel especially sensitive to ambulance sirens, wondering if another person who has Covid is on their way to a hospital or if the person may have another condition but not get the medical care needed because emergency is so overwrought. 

I also check a statistics database to see if any of the stores my senior friends shop at or other locations have staff who tested positive and tell them. 

So what I hope to do today and the next is post some things I stored in my phone to clear it out and also put on my editor hat and edit some posts I wrote with enthusiasm but not so much attention to punctuation.

Oh, I, like you, need the crisis to be over. So you know what I don't have to say!