“Gymtimidation”

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In an effort to mitigate the depressive episode I’ve been in for a while (and to try and take off a few pounds if I can), I’ve committed myself to going to the gym every other day.  Nothing excessive; I’m hardly a gym rat, and I have to start with small, realistic goals here.

I go with Coombsie.  In the morning.  Pre-dawn.  It’s really the only time that fits for us and our schedules.  This is dreadful for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I am an angry beastie in the morning.  When I wake up and get out of bed, I usually have to go sit on the couch for at least 10 minutes, contemplating the horror of being awake.  Then it takes me two cups of coffee before I can even handle putting on my makeup and getting dressed.  It is a process for me, “waking up.”  It is not that way for Coombsie.  He is relentlessly, unpleasantly cheerful.

To manage this “every other day” thing, I absolutely have to have my sneakers and my gym clothes at the foot of the bed.  If they are in the dryer, that is too much effort.  If they are in a drawer 10 feet away from the bed, that is also too much effort.

Once I am dressed, I sit on the couch with my iPhone, my Kindle, and my headphones, because I also will not go to the gym if I don’t have these totems with me.  I need music to blunt the savagery of being up this early.  I need words to keep me from obsessing over how many calories I’m burning.

In the car, Coombsie makes small talk.  To himself.  Because he knows I’m not listening.

We arrive at our local Planet Fitness, where allegedly one can work out sans Judgement and with no fear of being “Gymtimidated.”  Indeed, at Planet Fitness, “you belong!”  I mutter terrible things about where I’d like Planet Fitness to “belong” while Coombsie bounds across the dark parking lot like a Labrador puppy, yelping “DUDEBROGUY!” while giving the thumbs-up to imaginary dudebroguys.  The only thing that would make me happy, besides being back in bed, would be a sinkhole developing out of nowhere and taking the Planet Fitness down into its gravelly depths.  “You Belong,” indeed.

Once I’m there, though, and fully resigned to my fate, it’s….just as fucking terrible.  IT’S STILL DARK OUTSIDE.  I heave myself onto an elliptical machine facing the bank of television sets.  I can watch old-ass episodes of “Charmed,” the local news, ESPN…pretty much everything except what I’d LIKE to watch, which would be my cats slumbering peacefully at my feet WHILE I’M STILL IN BED.

Fuckthisshitfuckthisshitfuckthisshit.

I glance over at Coombsie, who’s already several minutes into his workout, and happily watching an old-ass episode of “Charmed.”  There is no way I can convince him to take me back home.  So I put on my headphones and prepare to grunt and lurch while simultaneously listening to my Pandora station and attempting to retain what I’m reading.

When I’m not reading utter trash (and Kindles are FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC for that sort of thing, because then nobody can see that I’m reading true crime), I’m currently shoring up my theological expertise, which I abandoned – oh – probably  shortly after I graduated college and stopped studying religion for fun, because drinking my weight in skunky Rolling Rocks and engaging in “experimental theatre” became more interesting.  And that was all rather liturgical in a boozy, rancid sort of way, if I really try and remember it.  Anyway, I’ve plowed through all three of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s books, which were really good, and now I’m on to a couple of books that she recommended:  The Year Of Living Biblically, and Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time.  The latter has been promising so far; I’m hoping it won’t fall flat the way Rabbi Jesus did, because I really had to force myself to finish reading that mess of fantastical speculative…um…mess.  “Historical Jesus” and the synoptic gospels were subjects I got really into as an undergrad.  Historical Jesus & The Synoptic Gospels would be a good band name.  Christ, I’m delirious.

So I’m reading about Historical Jesus, and listening to Alien Sex Fiend, and I’m still so pissed about being here at stupid o’clock that I don’t even think to be amused by this.

I watch the sun rise over the new police station they’re building right across the street.  I wonder if, when construction is completed, there will be a coterie of hunky cops among our sweaty ranks here.  Probably.  As it stands, the Dawn Patrol here at Planet Fitness is mostly people like me and Coombsie, getting that cardio in before going to work.  There’s a woman who is always here well before we arrive, and puts in at least 90 minutes.  She works out with a ferocity that I think I might have had, at some point, between the Skunky Rolling Rock Theatre years and when I moved to this town to help take care of Coombsie’s mother.  There were a couple of years where I was pretty fit.  How did I do that?  Can I do it again?  I don’t know.  I’m in my forties, I’m fighting this depression like it’s my job, and at this point I really kind of have to settle for “pretty good.”  On all fronts.

I finish up, and go sit in the giant yellow hand chair, and contemplate the horror of not only being awake, but having been awake since before dawn, AND having worked out.  Who am I?

I’m still working that out.

Drugstore (Makeup) Cowboy

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Long time no write, wot.

I’ve been struggling with how to “re-enter” the world of blogging.  When I originally started this in ‘99 (on Diaryland – remember THAT, oldsters?), I wrote about pop culture, and my drunken escapades.  When I got sober, I wrote about pop culture, and my Adventures In Recovery.

Then I became a caregiver, and I feel like everything got swallowed up in that.  I felt like I had a responsibility to tell this story, not only to preserve my dwindling sanity, but to let people know what a fucking godawful shitsucking disease Alzheimer’s is.  Because until you’re actually living that reality, you really have no idea.  You have a vague understanding that it involves losing your memory (hence the “jokes” I invariably hear from people when they misplace their keys or something stupid like that), but you really can’t grasp the day-to-day horror of what it actually does to someone.

And so I wrote about caregiving and Alzheimer’s, and not a lot much else.  Now my mother-in-law is gone, and I feel stripped of my identity.  I feel like I’ve lost my voice.  I’m exhausted, even now.  Marcia passed away before my very eyes a little less than two months ago.  I hadn’t been an active, daily caregiver for her for a year-and-a-half before that.  But I’m still so tired.  I’m trying to undo the physical damage that the depression and anxiety wrought, and that’s been tough.  The TMJ symptoms have abated somewhat.  But I’m 45 now, and the weight I gained during those years just isn’t going to come off so easily.   A lot of mornings I look at myself in the mirror and the mental beatings immediately take place.  Things I wouldn’t say to my dearest friends and loved ones are perfectly okay to say to myself.

I’m trying.  I’m getting up at Stupid O’Clock some mornings and dragging my ass to the gym.  I’m wearing clothes that I enjoy.  And I’m buying crap tons of makeup.

This is my new thing.  Makeup.  I’ve always worn it before, but now I’m going out and buying brushes and palettes and primer like my face is a blank canvas, or a weather-worn beach house.  I’m mainly hitting places like Sephora, but sometimes I feel the siren call of the CVS.

I “came of age” in the Eighties.  I began trying to make informed beauty purchases (beyond the tinny/fruity fragrances that my mom would get me from Avon) in ’83 or so, when I was junior high.

Lipgloss was the gateway drug.  I was learning the very complicated rules for budding womanhood via studying the more popular girls in my class.  We all had to carry an itty-bitty Jordache purse.  I had this one:

jordache

These flimsy-ass things could accommodate a comb, a pen that wrote in at least three different colors, a pack of Now & Laters, and not much else.  But we crammed them full of crap anyway, to the point where the strap would fray and break.  And then you had to be the loser with a safety pin keeping the strap on.  I digress.  You of course also had to have lipgloss in this bag.  Maybe several.  Kissing Potion, which gobbed up in a shiny, sticky mess and made you look like you were fellating a jar of rubber cement.  Lip Smackers, which went on much smoother and tasted pretty good.  And if you were really fancy, you got that shit in the olde-tyme-looking tin.  I had them all, although I wouldn’t actually be kissed by a boy until after I graduated high school.  But HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL, OKAY.

I’d peruse the cosmetic aisle of the local drugstore, and purchase things that would make me a little more “adult,” when really what I looked like was a gobby-lipped clown with orange streaked hair (from all the Sun-In I’d pour on my head and then fry into infinity with the blowdryer).

Sun-In

And then, to top it all off, you had to drown yourself in perfume.  The obvious choice, for me, would have been Love’s Baby Soft (“because innocence is sexier than you think”) but I sought a more sophisticated signature scent.  Giorgio seemed fancy, but who could afford Giorgio on an infrequent babysitter’s salary?  PROBLEM SOLVED.

designer primo
THEY STILL MAKE THIS SHIT.  My perfume tastes are considerably more refined these days (although I will admit a fondness for J.Lo’s Glow), but every time I go to CVS now, I feel like I should revisit my young-teen-self and blast this all over my naked person, and go around smelling like an aluminum-tinged fruit salad.  SAVOR ME.

So what’s to be had at the drugstore these days?  The usual brands (Revlon still makes “Cherries In The Snow” and “Toast Of New York”), the usual cheap stuff.  But I must now sing the praises of the ELIXIR OF LIFE that is micellar water.

Garnier-Micellar-Cleansing-Water-Waterproof

I want to have a bottle of this in every room in my house.  I want to always have it within arm’s reach.  It is that miraculous.  My makeup just SLIDES OFF MY FACE every night when I use this GIFT FROM THE GODS.  Bow to the micellar water.  ALL HAIL.

I’ve also become fascinated with the NYX brand, which is not quite Maybelline, but not quite Wet-n-Wild.  Their “Butter” lipstick is really good.

I’ve been getting an odd sense of comfort just wandering that cosmetic aisle these days.  It’s taking me back to a more innocent version of myself.  Am I “filling a hole” with stuff?  Possibly.  I won’t lie and say that buying a little tube of something doesn’t give me a little stab of pleasure.  Having something small and shiny that promises to make me prettier.  But it’s helping me somehow.  Having a morning ritual in which I’m highlighting and primping makes me feel a little more part of the world again.  I won’t apologize for that.

An Open Letter To Open Letter Writers

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I think it’s my turn now, right?  I’m 45.

Listen. I struggled. Nobody knows how I struggled.

I spent my early twenties in a riot of part-time jobs, “underground” theatre, and literature classes and the whole period reeks of skunky Rolling Rocks, unwashed flannel, and ennui.

What was minimum wage back then? Fuck if I know. I was drunk.

When I got my MFA (in Creative Writing; my BA’s in Theatre – I win for racking up the most non-lucrative degrees), and had to deal with Sallie Mae for the first time, I looked at the debt I’d accrued, did some mental calculating, and figured I’d be done paying my loans in about 20 years. It was horrifying. It was depressing. So I probably got scuttered and went home with a bass player. That’s what you did BACK IN MY DAY.

I’m not going to scold Talia, or Stefanie, or Sara Lynn (but I will give props to her outstanding eyebrow game). I’m 45. I carry tweezers in every goddamn bag I own. And those tweezers aren’t for MY eyebrow game, I’ll tell you that much. The other day I had a hot flash so bad I had to roll down the window and stick my head out of it like a Golden Retriever. Everyone’s got shit.

Now get off my lawn.

Goodbye, Marcia

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On Tuesday morning, my mother-in-law passed away, after years of battling Alzheimer’s. Kevin, his brother, and I were with her as she breathed her last.

It’s the end of a long chapter in our lives. I’m no longer her caregiver. I’m no longer her advocate. I’m not sure what to do with myself. The illness has defined me and shaped the course of my life and my writing for years. There are so many feelings.

I’m angry. I’m brain-crazedly angry at the disease and what it did to my mother-in-law. How it insidiously and slowly destroyed everything that made her who she was. And when it was done stealing her personality traits, her talents, and her memories, it went for her ability to communicate, to swallow, and to fight off the infections she kept getting.

I’m numb. I still can’t quite believe what I witnessed on Tuesday. I have never watched anyone die. I have been to countless wakes and funerals. I have seen the dead. But I have never seen someone die right before me. I am not sure how to process it. Was it beautiful? Was it awful? I have no idea. I don’t want anyone to tell me, either. I need to figure that out for myself.

I’m relieved. I’m relieved for her, because she is no longer trapped in a brain and a body that has ceased to function normally. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved for myself, for Kevin, and for our family. We no longer have to watch her disappear. The protracted, horrible, years-long goodbye is over.

I’m sad.

I’m guilt-ridden. Still. I feel guilty that we didn’t do more for her while she was living with us. We went into caregiving with absolutely NO clue as to what we were getting ourselves into. We had to learn along the way, and we made so many mistakes. I feel guilty that we had to place her somewhere. I feel guilty that there were days when the last thing I wanted to do was go visit. I feel guilty that I feel relieved that it’s over.

I’m grateful. This is harder to summon right now, because of all the aforementioned stuff. But I’m grateful to the unbelievably kind doctors and nurses at the hospital where she died, who were honest with us, who respected Marcia’s Do Not Resuscitate directive, who brought us coffee and water and snacks as we held vigil. I’m grateful to the woman from the hospice who made arrangements for Marcia to be transferred there, even as that wound up not being necessary. I’m grateful to the hospital’s chaplain who prayed over her. I’m grateful that there are people whose job it is to work with the grieving, and who do this with such compassion and gentleness. I’m grateful to the nurses and aides who took care of Marcia during the last year and a half. I’m grateful to the aides that helped us while Marcia was still living with us. I’m grateful to anyone who offered a kind word, a Starbucks card, a cooler full of food so we didn’t have to deal with cooking. I’m grateful for everyone who posted their condolences to us on Facebook. I’ve learned how weirdly comforting it is to log on and see a virtual “guestbook” of kindness.

I’m frightened. Frightened that I’m going to get Alzheimer’s, or that Kevin will. Frightened that my only memories of Marcia are of when she was ill. Surely I can remember her before that? I’ve known her for nearly twenty years, only six of which she was sick. And yet it’s all I can muster. They don’t tell you that in all the literature – how it’s going to affect YOUR memory.

Yesterday I went through her photos. I wanted an album at the funeral home. Pictures in nice frames. So I sat at the dining room table and chose all the photos of her that people would want to see. She had a big toothy smile. I do remember that. Even towards the end, she could flash one of those.

I felt better as I worked through the shoeboxes and old albums. I’m still not entirely remembering, but it’s good to have the photographic evidence.


  
  
  

Plans & Provisions

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Ever have a UTI?

Yeah, this is a great way to kick off a post, I know. Bear with me.

I used to get them a lot in my twenties. They’re horrible. They’re painful, and they can absolutely ruin your day, for days.

I also have to accept that as I get older, they’re going to make a return. They’re common in the elderly.

And when an elderly person with Alzheimer’s gets a UTI, it’s a whole other level of awful.

My mother-in-law is back in the hospital recovering from a UTI. We’d dealt with this before, when she was living with us, but we’d never seen her this wiped out from it. On Sunday, we honestly thought this was the end. As of today, she’s doing remarkably better.

This is yet another layer of the reality that is Alzheimer’s. And this is, yet again, why I’ve come to have ZERO patience with people making jokes about it (“Lost my keys again! Damn Alzheimer’s! Eh heh heh heh HEH…”). You don’t just forget where you put stuff. You don’t just blank out on names. You forget people entirely. You forget how to use utensils. You forget how to speak. You no longer have the means to communicate when something is wrong. And once all the cognitive stuff is wiped out, the disease attacks the rest of the brain, the parts that regulate things like swallowing, breathing, and fending off illness. I could break it down further, and paint quite a vivid picture of just how fucking horrible this disease is, but I’ll spare you. Just – THINK before you make an Alzheimer’s joke. Please.

And so while my mother-in-law is bouncing back from this infection, these emergencies will become more and more a part of our reality. Eventually, Aviv is not going to be able to accommodate her. Eventually, she is going to require around-the-clock nursing care. Thus, we start our next round of plans and provisions. She no longer lives with us, but the caregiving continues.

I’m tired. I’m sad. I know in my heart that this is not the life she would have wanted for herself, even as I still struggle to remember who she was before the diagnosis. The IV fluids and antibiotics have roused her. She’s sitting up, she’s cheerful, she even ate a little pasta last night. In all probability, she’ll be back at Aviv by the end of the week, having her nails done and watching Family Feud in the dayroom. I’m relieved that this wasn’t more serious, and yet I know I have to gird myself for the battles which most certainly lay ahead. Because “more serious” IS coming. Maybe not tomorrow, or next month. But it’s coming, boy howdy.

Natch, this isn’t exactly helping with my depression. But I’m managing. Trying to give myself a break here and there, by not clobbering myself over my weight gain, my periodically wanting to retreat into hours of crap television, my not being at Aviv 24/7 to make sure Marcia doesn’t get another UTI. I’m wired to feel guilty for just about everything. I can still rattle off an Act Of Contrition like nobody’s business. Your candidate doesn’t make the ballot? Hell, that’s my fault, too. Working on that.

More than ever, I’ve got to lean on that “one day at a time” thing. Because while drinking is not anywhere on the agenda today, I’ve got to do the thing that I’m constantly telling other people in recovery to do, and that’s to look down and see where my feet are. Because when I don’t do that, I’m mentally living in moments that haven’t even happened, and they’re mostly pretty grim. And they FEEL 100% real. I’m not sure that people who don’t experience anxiety like this entirely understand that last point. I can be utterly convinced the horror show in my head is totally going to happen.

In the meantime, I’m staying hydrated. *I* don’t need a UTI on top of all of this.

Limping along…

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Well, I haven’t written anything here since November. That’s pretty terrible.

I have been entirely too much in my feelings since October. I’m still putting on a good show on Facebook, where it’s fairly easy to compartmentalize and show only what you want people to see. The fact is that I have been battling a pretty ugly bout of depression for the last 3+ months.

Depression lives deep inside me at all times, kind of the way the chicken pox virus camps out near your spinal column. It never totally goes away. Like Churchill’s “black dog,” it slumbers until something rousts it, and it lurches out, yowling and slobbering, and right now it’s taking massive amounts of my energy to take it for a walk and put it back in its crate.

It’s situational, for the most part, and while the circumstances that brought it on are largely resolving themselves, I still have days where I feel like a discarded Dunkin’ Donuts cup in a dirty snowbank.

That’s about as much analogy as I can muster right now. But that was pretty good, right?

So, since the developments last fall which left me emotionally upended, I’m slowly but surely doing everything I’m supposed to. Reaching out, cultivating some really solid friendships with amazing women, staying sober, checking in with the therapist and the psych nurse…and mmmaybe buying crap I don’t need here and there. Fuck it – I spent my bonus this year on totally responsible, adult purchases (a winter coat that practically doubles as a sleeping bag, and Bean boots); I can buy this utterly ridiculous dress that I fully intend to wear at my band’s next gig:

boom

Even though it’s a sweater dress, and sweater dresses look good on NO ONE, I am going to wear the shit out of this. I DON’T CARE.

And I suppose I need to start writing again.

Like To Get To Know You Well (once I’m done sobbing)

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Despite having an entire website devoted to my 13-year-old self, I am actually more emotionally connected to 15-year-old Lisa.

15. That’s such a tender age, too. At 15, I was still figuring out where I belonged. I’d found what would turn out to be my lifelong “tribe,” as it were, but I was standing right at the edge of that circle, not quite confident enough to fully participate. I was watching, and learning, and praying I wouldn’t be rejected.

My 15-year-old heart was evenly divided among three people. One was a boy in the aforementioned “tribe,” but I couldn’t muster the bravery to approach him and tell him I liked him “that way” (as it turned out, that boy would become my bandmate some 25 years later, but this was something I couldn’t know or even dare to imagine back then). Second was Neil Finn. And the third was Howard Jones.

He was ebullient. His music was ebullient. There was an impishness beneath that outstanding hairdo. I bought the “Things Can Only Get Better” 45 and played it incessantly. The sound of the needle hitting the record, the second or two of popping and crackling, and the staggered synth opening of the song was like being embraced in a warm, friendly hug. Every time. Of course I learned to love the rest of his work, but even to this day, hearing the beginning of that song takes me back to that hug.

So when I heard several weeks ago that he’d playing at a club that I myself had played a number of times, I was thrilled. Seeing him in such an intimate setting, and knowing that we’d both been on that VERY SAME STAGE? Plus the very real possibility of actually getting to TALK TO HIM and tell him alllllll of this? My God.

It was such a good show. Just him and a piano. His voice is just as sonorous and clear and heartbreaking as it was then. And he’s so funny and charming. I sat there and beamed. And in my purse was that very same 45 of “Things Can Only Get Better.” I was so looking forward to having him sign it and getting to express to him all the things his music has meant to me. It was going to be the perfect ending to a magical night. So I got in line after the performance and waited for him to emerge from backstage.

Now, understand – I’ve been a huge fan of this guy for 30 years. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time over those years rehearsing the witty banter I’d exchange with him when we finally got to meet. I would talk to him with the respect he deserved, yet with the confidence stemming from my own experience as a musician and writer. I would be reverent, yet poised. Giddy, yet clever.

Here is the transcript of the conversation that actually transpired between myself and Howard Jones:

Me: “Oh! I, um, brought a Sharpie because I didn’t know if you’d have one.”
HJ: “No, I’ve got this one; it’s very good.”
Me: “Ehhhh heh heh heh hehhh.”

12122884_10156276851565085_8306004423572650459_nI think I stammered some kind of thank you while my husband stepped in and attempted damage control by complimenting him on the show. I just stood there looking like one of those sucker fish, or like Winona Ryder in every scene where she’s supposed to be verklempt. You know what I’m talking about.

PicMonkey CollageAnyway – then I burst into tears. I slumped into a booth behind the merch table and bawled as one of our companions went to the bar and grabbed me a bunch of napkins for me to snuffle piteously into. Meanwhile, his manager kept looking over at me as if he wasn’t sure whether to comfort me or GET ME THE HELL AWAY FROM HOWARD.

indexIt was, bar none, my worst performance since the time I was in Annie Get Your Gun when I was like 18 and suddenly forgot the entire second verse of “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun” and just kind of stomped around onstage in my fake buckskins with a rictus of startled alarm glued to my face.

So, Howard, if for some reason you find yourself reading this – I’m really not (that) insane. Thank you for coming to Johnny D’s to play, and for signing my record, and posing for a picture with me. And for everything, really.

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A Requiem For “Cute”

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I had a hot flash on the Green Line a couple of nights ago.

I say this because I need to own it. A hot flash. Like – sweat pouring down my back, face on fire, felt like I was gonna hurl – hot flash.

I don’t get them often. I’m not full-blown menopausal…yet. But I’m pushing it, you know? I’m 45. Things are dropping, drooping, and drying out. Also, now, evidently, heating up, although not in a way that I at all enjoy.

I’ve been joking about the chin hairs for a while now. I have a pair of tweezers in every handbag I own. But with the introduction of hot flashes into my world, it’s time to admit that I am not a young, cute thing anymore.

And when I say this, folks, it’s not to invite an outcry of “BUT YOU *ARE* CUTE OMG STOP!” Because listen – I am 45 years old and I left “cute” somewhere back in 2007, and even then it was getting a little threadbare. “Cute” is no longer in my wheelhouse.

When I say I’m not “cute,” I mean that I am making a conscious decision to leave it back in the early 2000s or whatever. Maybe even back in ’95, truth be told, around the time I was still wearing, like, mini-kilts and carrying a Hello Kitty backpack….to GRADUATE SCHOOL.

I was faced with my not-cuteness not too long ago, when I was introduced to one of my husband’s coworkers. She was cute. I was….well, I won’t go so far as to say “matronly,” but I was rocking a semi-mature look that day. Big comfy sweater, stacked heels, tasteful jewelry. And I was feeling moderately okay about myself up until that introduction. Then I immediately felt like a dowdy, dumpy she-beast. I looked at her calf-high boots and her sassy little dress (Size 4, maybe? 6, tops?) and suddenly felt as if I’d outfitted myself in a pup tent purchased for half-off because it was the display model. And I wanted to slink away muttering “Bargon wanchi kox paa, Solo! Hoo hoo hoo hoo…”

I had to ask myself WHY – when I am ordinarily so pro-body-positivity and adamant that I should not be comparing myself to other women (particularly women who are a good 10 years younger than I am, because that shit is just not fair) – I immediately start in on the self-hate. Yeah – I know it’s conditioning. It’s practically hard-wired and/or arguably some kind of Paleolithic instinct to size up another woman as “competition.” Or something.

And this is when I have to remember AAALLLLLLLLL of the times I’ve looked back at pictures of myself at various ages and remember that, at every age, I thought of myself as a monster. 13. 15. 18. 25. 36. 40. And when I look at those pictures now, I don’t see what I saw then. And it’s like, I don’t want to have to be 60, looking back on myself at 45, and doing this EXACT SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN. I’ve spent entirely too much time saying things to myself that I would never dream of saying to my closest friends. That has to stop.

But let’s get back to “cute.” I am not claiming it for myself anymore. I am not going to feel BAD because this isn’t what, or who, I am these days.

There’s a poem by Louis de Paor in which there’s a line (an cailín a bhfuil áilleacht an bhróin ina gnúis) that translates roughly to: “the girl in whose face is sorrow’s beauty.” This is something that I have claimed for myself, as DRAMATIC as I know it sounds to some people. But fuck it; this is what has replaced “cute” for me. It has rung particularly truthful in the past few years, as crisis after crisis has knocked me on my ass. For a time I was looking at myself in the mirror and thinking how HAGGARD I looked. I’m not haggard; I am goddamned beautiful from sorrow and stress and uncertainty. Radiant, even.

But cute? No. And that’s okay.

My (heretofore unlikely) friend

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It started, I think, with a stupid tweet about her last name. I think I asked her why, in an environment where the men always have the upper hand, was her last name hyphenated? Shouldn’t her mother, Shirley Phelps-Roper, exhibit submission to her husband in all things?

I was tweeting to Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps and the social media “voice” of the Westboro Baptist Church (you know – the “God Hates Fags” folks).

I don’t even know what compelled me to come up with this. I’d been reading her Twitter page for some time and was simultaneously outraged and fascinated. I knew I wasn’t up to the task of arguing scripture with her; I’d watched the WBC in action enough to know that they had biblical justification for EVERYTHING they did, and having not been quite so immersed in bible study as the Phelpses, despite 12+ years of Catholic education (which they would have sneered at anyway, because – sigh – “Catholics aren’t Christians”), I couldn’t whip out chapter-and-verse from memory the way Megan could. This was a girl who had a KJV app on her phone. You simply couldn’t shout “BUT WHAT ABOUT JOHN 3:16?!” at any member of the WBC; they’d know then that you hadn’t read beyond that verse, and were therefore biblically ig’nant (“…he that believeth not is condemned already.”). And on that point, they were pretty much correct. Let me tell you all right now: most people cannot, and should not, go to the mat with the WBC in terms of the bible; it’s like walking into the annual James Joyce Conference having only glanced through the Cliff Notes of Ulysses.

Despite what people believe about the Phelpses (that they’re a group of backwater, inbred imbeciles), the fact is that they are a shrewd, very well educated lot. And despite the persistent rumors that they’re actually running some kind of elaborate scam, making all of their money by suing counter protestors, the adults in the church are gainfully employed (mostly in law or medicine), and are expected to contribute a certain percentage of their income back into the church. It should also go without saying that they’re not a decades-long performance art piece funded by the Democrats in order to make Christians look bad. None of these rumors are true.

Anyway – I’d read her tweets and sputter and fume and try to find SOME way of getting at her. I was not one for ad hominem attacks; as horrifying as I found the WBC, to call them names seemed counter-intuitive, seeing as part of what was so horrible about them was the way they flung the word “fag” around. And at any rate it didn’t seem to matter what anyone said to Megan; her responses were always measured, and bemused. Which of course was even more infuriating. And yet I began to harbor a grudging respect for her. I saw, in the midst of the gay-and-Jew-bashing lunacy she’d been brought up to believe, a lambent intelligence and wittiness in her. I began to think, “She is WAY too smart for this.”

And then I thought: “I really hope she gets out of this.”

I stopped picking fights with her. I was just one of countless people challenging her belief system, or mocking her, or just trying to figure out why her family did these batshit crazy things. And I went on posting bad 80’s videos and coming up with brittle bons mots like I do.

There came a point when I realized I hadn’t heard anything about her in months. Curious, I popped over to her Twitter account. Her profile picture had changed. Where it had been a shot of her sandaled foot coyly stepping on an American flag, now it appeared to be of a fence bedecked with little white lights. Her bio, which had been the usual Sturm und Drang of “USA IS DOOMED BECAUSE FAGS” found on other WBC Twitter pages, read: “You’re just a human being, my dear, sweet child.”

Huh.

Her tweets were her typical biblically-sound wisecracking up until around November 2012, at which point they stopped altogether until February. That tweet simply said “Hi,” and included a link to a short essay on Medium explaining that, after a period of crippling doubt and tremendous self-reflection, Megan and her younger sister Grace had left Westboro.

I was floored. And almost immediately, I felt compelled to send her a little message of support. I knew that at this point, she’d had no contact with her parents, siblings, and other family members still at Westboro, as it’s understood that if you leave, you are persona non grata (“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”). I couldn’t imagine how isolated and lonely that would make me feel. And I don’t even remember what I said, but she thanked me.

And so began my rebooted online relationship with Megan Phelps-Roper. I didn’t want to come off as a creeper, so I kept it light at first, until I found myself leaping to her defense when others were still railing at her. I’d send them the link to the Medium piece. Some of them would then apologize to her. I reached out to Grace as well. I told them that if they ever found themselves in Boston, they had a friend here. And somehow, they believed me. Which couldn’t have been easy for them, given that they had been raised to believe that the world outside of the WBC was evil, that those not in the church were hated by God and not to be trusted. And here I was, a 40-something former Catholic who was maybe still praying the Rosary now and then (it SOOTHES me, okay?!), who had a “gay boyfriend” and enjoyed all manner of filthy entertainment, saying “Come on over! I’ll bake a pie!”

I mean…

Suddenly, it seemed that Megan and I were actually friends. Like – she has my cellphone #/knows personal bidness about me/drops me a line to check on me if I tweet something depressing. Friends.

I dug through bins in my dark, dank basement looking for a paper I’d written in graduate school about Emily Dickinson’s influence on Marilynne Robinson (a writer we both admire) so I could scan it and email it to her. As I pulled it out and stumbled around my basement yelling “Ah HA!” – triumphant – I had to pause and reflect on how I’d gone to the trouble of doing this for someone who, not just a couple of years ago, had so confounded and enraged me. It’s hilarious. It’s utterly insane. It’s amazing. Friends.

I find myself checking in on her like a meddling auntie – Are you okay? Don’t be sad. Well, BE sad, but be hopeful. When are you coming to visit? – like she doesn’t have people in her own family (those who’ve also left WBC, as well as those on her dad’s side of the family that she’s now connecting with) to do this for her. But I feel compelled nonetheless. I see the things that some people still say to her, and I cringe. She is, of course, an adult, and certainly “used to” the verbal assault by now, but it cannot be easy to see, every day, the anger that still erupts from her past actions in the WBC, almost three years after leaving.

Several weeks ago, I got a message from her saying she was going to be speaking in town, and could we meet up? After a lot of back-and-forth and juggling of calendars and such, we finally were able to meet for dinner (as an added bonus, I also got to meet the very lovely, and very ripped, Lauren Drain). We spent a good few hours laughing. Laughing about some of the more absurd signs the WBC has produced (my personal favorite is “Bitch Burger,” which Lauren and Megan found hilarious). Laughing about not knowing how to pronounce half of the stuff on the menu. Laughing like a group of people who’d found some common ground, and were just genuinely enjoying one another’s company.

But there were some tough moments, too. What strikes me now about my friendship with Megan is how we both came out of dependencies which had us painting ourselves into corners. We both had to come to terms with how something that had provided a means of coping, and a way to define ourselves, had ceased to work. For me, it was alcohol. For Megan, it was the WBC. Not knowing how else to maneuver through our lives without these things, we remained stuck, and fearful. And when something becomes too painful, you have to make a leap of faith that you can move forward, and then make the move.

Of course, my quitting drinking didn’t result in my family never speaking to me again; I don’t want to make light of the very real sacrifices Megan, and the others who have left, have had to make in order to do the right thing. But the other thing we spoke at length about was gratitude. Megan has learned that people outside of the WBC are not evil, that many in fact have been unfailingly kind and generous. And even with the daily pangs of missing her parents and siblings and friends who remain in the church, her life is largely one of enormous opportunity. She travels. She has a boyfriend whom she absolutely adores. She is incandescent with possibility. And she is grateful.

The easiest route to take sometimes is one of outright dismissal. A lesson that my father has repeatedly imparted on me and my siblings is this: “Consider the source.” And I get that the majority of people reading this don’t feel they particularly need to do this when it comes to the Phelpses, the Drains, the Hockenbargers, and the others who make up the WBC’s membership. That’s understandable. The protests, the signs, the indoctrination – these are indescribably awful to those of us who weren’t born into this and can’t for the life of us imagine how it’s in any way good or right. And it isn’t good or right, but yet that’s what they believe. What they’ve been taught from birth to believe. And that’s something I’ve frequently said about the WBC: “They’re not EVIL; they’re FRIGHTENED.” And fear can make one do some pretty – well – batshit crazy things.

Sometimes I send a tweet or two to Shirley, Megan’s mother. I’m always polite, the way one is with a friend’s mom, even though I completely disagree with her church’s doctrine. I know that someone who’s raised a person as frigging delightful as Megan simply cannot be a terrible person. I’d like to think that someday I’ll get to meet Shirley, too. In an interesting moment at dinner, Lauren looked at me, then looked at Megan, and said, “Your mom would TOTALLY get along with Lisa.” I didn’t find that insulting in the least. And if I do get to meet her, I would tell her that as far as Proverbs 22:6 goes (“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”), here – in Megan – is no failure.

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Semi-manageable funk gonna give it to ya.

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I’ve spent the last couple of months in what I can only call a “semi-manageable funk.” Depression and anxiety have been my lifelong companions, and yet it’s always such an unpleasant surprise when they suddenly team up and give me a beatdown behind the school. They’ve taken my lunch money AND my Game Boy, psychologically speaking.

A large part of it is situational. But the situation has unleashed the neurochemical beasties that I mostly try to keep padlocked in the cellar, kind of like Deadite Henrietta in “Evil Dead II.”

ed2-henriettamonster1I’m managing. I’m taking my medication dutifully and as prescribed. I’m seeing my therapist a bit more often, and staying away from the garbage food as best I can. But I’m living in a sort of perpetual state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s just that at this point, so many fucking shoes have dropped I may as well be living in a DSW.

I have this recurring dream when I’m in this state. I’m in college, there’s like one day left before I go home for the summer, and I haven’t packed up my shit. My roommate has everything organized and ready to go into storage, and my stuff is EVERYWHERE. I have no boxes. I’m sitting in the middle of piles of clothes and records and I KNOW that I’ve got to deal with this, but instead I just sort of poke around, getting more and more panicked.

I had the dream again last night, only this time I was also coloring my hair and was walking around the room with a glopped-up head, wondering why I’d done this since I only just went to the salon the day before (which was true, in my waking life) and thinking that Daryl, my colorist, was going to be RIPSHIT. And then the fire alarm went off, and I started frantically searching for a shower cap amidst all of my CRAP so I wouldn’t have to face everyone in the dorm looking like I had a freshly-slaughtered bunny rabbit on my head. Then I woke up.

So, yeah, you can maybe sort of comprehend my mental state right now.

Understand – I’m posting this as a way of “checking in.” I’m not looking for pity, sympathy, or platitudes. ESPECIALLY that last one. I’m doing what I can, and what I need to do, to navigate through this, rather than around. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before; it’s just that I’m allowing myself to NOT pretend I’m Miss Jolly Rancher, impervious to the slings and arrows my own brain is producing as some kind of back-asswards means of coping with what’s going on around me. I was the class clown long enough to know that while this is a marvelous means of getting people to want to be around you, it leaves you high and dry when the jokes can’t write themselves.

Here’s what I’d like – for the Universe or whatever to cool its jets for at least a week and stop dropping these suckass bombs in my lap so I can at least enjoy the fact that it’s almost Halloween. That’s probably a tall and unrealistic order. Things will happen as they happen, with no regard for me, my feelings, or my pesky little control issues.

But it’s almost Halloween. There’s that.