HEY YOU, GET OFF OF MY CLOUD

Earning wisdom. Sharing it - should anyone be interested.

//

She was the Princess in the workplace and I was most certainly not. The Princess, a Prince lined up, regaled everyone with the flotsam and jetsam of her courtship, Country Club wedding, honeymoon. We listened. And listened.

She barely worked at all. And this was allowed. Because. She got the job because she really was a Princess, a Mafia Princess. Every workplace had one.

The city bar with bouncers. He saw her across the room and knew he wanted to marry her instantly. How he treated her mother with respect. That he cried when he saw her in her wedding dress for the first time, walking up the isle. A bad boy. He wanted it all and fast.

Before they went to lay on the beach, he got out the nail clippers and clipped away her toe nails. 

Spare me.

Him driving her to the hospital to give birth, the baby crowning in the back seat. The honorific Natural Breeder.

He was ambitious. He always wanted more. He got arrested and went to prison.

//

She was pretty. Demure. Attached and ironed. Finally, someone, perhaps tired of doing their own job and whatever she'd been hired for, gave her a warning. Dee Dee could you open that box of dresses, hang them and steam them?

She tilted her head towards her shoulder, just a moment shrug, and with a faraway look in her eyes said, "Hey you, get off of my cloud."

C 2021

ENTANGLED

 

ALWAYS RUNNING LATE

There have been two people in my lifetime who would run late when they were angry, in general angry, or at me - though it was never expressed to me WHY the person might be angry with me and I couldn't think of any reason.

The person angry in general who was always running late would show up to get to a movie theatre late, drive too fast, expect a parking space to appear by miracle, have us physically running to buy tickets, and get us there just past the hypnotic induction to buy tubs of greasy popcorn, Milk Duds, Good N Plenty, and jiggly iced Cokes (which might have been a good thing). Still, it was not exciting. It was nervous. 

The other was usually on time. So when he'd not call to say he was running late, I'd wait, going through the stages of Concern, Worry, Upset, Anger, Confusion. (Did I get the time wrong? Should I call?).  More Worry (is he dead in a car accident?) and finally Relief. I wasn't sure what the protocol was when someone was teasing a no show. Why ask me to go somewhere?

Running late is being passive aggressive. 

A friend of mine once told me about the husband she was divorcing. "He'll say it's up to me but in the end he always has to have his way, whatever it is." She gave the example of selecting wall covering. Basically he had veto power. She ran around to stores, brought wallpaper books home and showed him what patterns she liked, whole color schemes for rooms running through her head, and his reasons why not ranged from dunno to full arguments. 

Really he wanted the house.

And got it.

//

I was subject to other forms of passive aggressive behavior. Like other psychobabble terms used in this mini series about crazy, I didn't know what the term meant for some time though I was experiencing it.

//

One person I knew would go into the one toilet bathroom at his business if someone came in that he didn't want to talk to. He hid. At some point the person waiting would go through the steps of realization that he was in there waiting them out. Maybe he'd even gone out the window.

Step one: No big deal. Everyone has to poop sometime.

Step two: Lord, I hope he isn't in there sick.

Step three: Is he in there cause I got other places to go and people to see.

Step four: Oh, I get it. He's not coming out because I'm here. He can call me, he has my number.

I saw this person make people Wonder. Worry. Get Mad. Feel Foolish. And Feel Confused - a few times, not knowing why he wasn't coming out.

Came the day when I was the one waiting for him to complete an enormous poop.

He never did call.

He let me wonder.

And go unpaid.

//

Perhaps the worst case of passive aggression (because of the ongoing insufferability of it) perpetrated upon me and another friend involves two sisters we first became friends with in high school. These two have lively personalities and seem happy in life. You'd never suspect the joy they must get from annoying and upsetting us for years on end. How? By sending very late birthday cards year after year, some which even say belated, as if despite the years of friendship they just couldn't get the date right, as if we were to be impressed with how busy they must be that they're running late in life. But really there's this test. Is this the year the friendship will be declared over?

I was the one to give up, but not without trying to keep in touch. The sister I was friends with first, ever since we agreed she had rights on a certain boy when we were too innocent to realize nobody owns anybody, would never get around to writing back when I sent her a (snailmail) letter.

Passive Aggressive people always seem to be gaming in some way. I think in some relationships the passive aggressive person is trying to make you jealous. Because then if you definitely give up they feel it and they come around again.

I gave up and she called me long distance to say she wanted to come visit me on her vacation. I said, "You can stay here but I have to work and use my car. We can do some things in the evenings. You'll need a car to get around so you can rent one. It's about an hour in traffic to the beach."

And then she never called back. Or wrote back. Did she come out, stay at a hotel, and not bother to get together with me for lunch?

This is a test. It is just a test. For the next 60 seconds...

C 2021 Christine Trzyna

A FRIEND DIES DURING A ROUTINE MEDICAL PROCEDURE

A woman I knew who did extensive volunteer work serving hot meals to anyone who showed up, including homeless people, at her church every Sunday, has died.

On Sunday mutual friends and her minister had been trying to reach her hoping to visit her in the hospital. They weren't sure of which hospital as she had sent a message that she was going in but made light of the whole thing and said she'd talk to them in a few days. They felt concerned not hearing back from her. Certainly she didn't expect to die. This morning we are dealing with the notion that it must have been her time. But here's the situation: She didn't die of Covid but certainly Covid deaths will effect her due to the back log of funerals, burials, and cremations. So there's a feeling of irony as well as confusion about a memorial service. Her boyfriend is in shock.

I had been thinking of her so strongly on Sunday. 

She was no nonsense and known for keeping order. She was respected by those she worked with and those she served. She was known for looking in on her neighbors. She took food to them when they were unable to leave the house.

This woman took blankets around to people who needed them. She cared about the man who had taken up residence on the bus bench in view of her building.

After a while people took to knocking on her door when they needed something. Now all those people are on their own.

And so the word is out that she's not coming back to her earth home.

But I don't want to say Rest In Peace because I can't imagine someone so active taking an eternal snooze in the After Life. I can imagine her being a leader and ordering some snoozers to get off their heavenly sofas and move their butts!

I imagine she is blessed.

Goodbye!

HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART?

Is this heart just starting to break or just starting to mend?
 

A SPARE PERSONALITY SELF REVEALS

He was a good friend to me for several years. Platonic. Like a brother, I thought, or better than one. So I knew about his search for a female partner in life. Over time my opinion about it changed. I saw a pattern of him rejecting good women before giving them a chance. He wasn't a womanizer. He put an extreme emphasis on attraction though. So if he wasn't real excited and feeling over the moon about a person after three dates well maybe he'd give it six. Meeting women and asking them out on dates wasn't the problem.

Meanwhile his criteria when it came to a woman's looks became more detailed. A certain kind of eye. A certain kind of smile. He had male friends who were womanizers. They were bad influencers. They would talk about various women - their looks - and brag to him about the women they claimed. This shrunk his confidence. 

One of these men was cruelly beautiful and comported himself around the music clubs on Sunset. He wasn't just cool. He was cold. He was a Brain Fucker that left women damaged. His arrogance was that he'd offer my friend his "leftovers."

I wished my friend would step away from this person or people like this but I had friends he didn't like too.

What was happening to the nice guy I once knew?

One day at a party my friend's latest date and I met. I liked her. So when he said, "I just get this feeling - I don't know - like I'm not getting to know her," I said, "You need to start giving women more time. At least a few more weeks."

How or why people fall in love is a mystery. Told repeatedly that for men it's visual at first, I often wonder What about Charisma and Chemistry? Have you ever people-watched and realized you'll never understand what couples see in each other and you don't have to? I have. In my very brief and long ago incarnation as a mall rat I'd sit resting my heels and watch the parade go by, wondering as couples walked by "what does she see in him?" Point being, there were plenty of couples who seemed to be into each other, even all over each other, who were visually not suitably matched. Something else was happening.

The woman, let's call her Bonnie since there are no Bonnie's in my life presently, had earned a Master's Degree in Psychology but said she didn't want to become a therapist. She worked at a retailer and was living in her parents sizeable home. She was intelligent. Slim and naturally pretty. No makeup. She seemed nice. If you made a list of the things these two people had in common, you would suspect compatibility. 

She walked around his house and told him she loved it. She said she wanted children. She said, when he said he was unsure, that she was a Big Girl and could have sex without expectation.

So they had sex. 

This was not a When Harry Met Sally moment. It made no difference in his desire to keep dating her and so at that point he told her "Let's be friends." (Ok. I know that line is usually B.S.)

She was furious. She wrote him a scathing letter. I had told her I was all for people honestly expressing themselves but this letter was a chakra killer. Most people who got such a letter would probably be horribly wounded and throw the person out of their lives and the hell with friendship. It was clear to me that she had lied about being a Big Girl. However, he and she persisted, he took blame despite her unfairness, bought her an expensive I'm Sorry gift, and, well, I left town.

When I got back to town, they were still friends and he suggested that she and I get better acquainted. At this point she was out of work and available. I started picking her up in my car and we went here, there, everywhere. Her parents were delighted. Apparently, she rarely left the house now, except when she borrowed their car and took off to meet someone for "coffee." My friend was aware of all this activity. He thought I was doing her some good. 

But one day while we sat next to each other at an outstanding concert, I looked over to her and said, enthusiastically, "Isn't this great!"

A male voice came out of her, surly and sarcastic. "Yea, it's great." I wasn't shocked. I was quite surprised.

On another trip, with me doing all the driving, I made a rest stop at a Mission. It was open so I decided to go in. Not raised in any religion, she didn't want to go in. "Look at the architecture and art," I suggested. While I lit a candle in honor of a deceased relative, she sat in a pew with big earphones on that protected her from God with blaring punk music.

Then there was the afternoon we went to an independent coffee house and when a woman with two sweet children sat across from her, she growled "I can't sit here, I hate children," I got home and called him.

She said what?

My friend was right about not getting to know her. She told people what she thought they wanted to hear, to please people and remain unknown. Under all that accommodation someone was absent.

She liked to listen but you couldn't turn the conversation around to her and get an answer from her about what she thought on the same subject you went on about. Tell me she didn't learn to do that without doing clinical hours.

Now the question was, what was her diagnosis? Multiple Personality Disorder or Possessed?  

One night at another coffee house, she awaited a call from a new man. He called and she ran out the door and down the block to meet him. Leaving me to sit there wondering if I should wait for her return or go.

Later, at a book fair, she told me, "I'm like a man about sex." She was answering ads and hooking up in search of a husband who would support her. This was pre hook ups, pre friends with benefits.

She had a collection of ex's. I realized my friend was just part of the collection. That she was back in the personality she'd worn when she first met him.

Bonnie was not the first person I met who had a degree in psychology and was "crazy" or the last person I'd meet who had more than one personality voice, but I think she was the best at hiding that she was sick and the most reluctant to be in therapy to deal with it. A friend tells me these disorders are biological but I tend to think there's a spiritual aspect. The friend tells me there is no Satan, no Devil, that Evil is in people. I think there are many evil entities, embodied and not, just looking to possess, if not possess, confuse.

I recommend M. Scott Peck's book People Of The Lie.

C 2021

A LIFE OF MOURNING

She was so heartbroken when her college fiancée broke off with her and moved on to another woman, who she called a whore, that she became a case of arrested development.

I've come to think of a first heartbreak as a rite of passage. Except when a person doesn't get past it.

She was a sweet, feminine woman. The type who wore soft pink angora and pearls, a Viking blond, lively blue eyes, fine pink skin, and a pretty smile. 

He had given her a dainty pearl ring. 

Memory can be flawed. I saw the pearl ring. But - a fraternity pin too?

She never dated again. 

Not once.

She became massively and morbidly, overweight. If you are what you eat, a potato chip.

I didn't recognize her.

She barely fit in my car.

She had crushes on soap opera stars. Fantasies. A lifetime of keeping men away with an armor of fat.

She went home from work and ate. Not just potato chips. Meals for two. 

C 2021

Notes: I'm aware that fat is attractive to a subculture. Mostly it's illness.

More Notes: This Isn't a Fat Shaming post. However, if the Shame Game need be applied, let's start with her family who apparently had/have so much phony "unconditional love" that they never staged an intervention to get her into a diet camp or foodie rehab or psychotherapy. It's easy to gain 20 pounds in lockdown. It's not easy to bloom to 300 pounds.

NO DIRECTION HOME

 

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 phony. 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 label 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 whoppers 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 atheist 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 Christine Trzyna

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 her 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.