The shaving of the head - 72 hours later

I was pretty clear in my last post that choosing to donate my hair (read: shave it all off and shamelessly fundraise for St. Baldricks) was equal parts wanting to participate in something unifying, a way for my mom-self to fight against something that keeps me up at night and just plain old-fashion curiosity.  I was hoping that I would learn something about myself when this process was finished. 

It didn't take that long.  48 hours in I was leveled. 

I got asked "why" a lot this weekend and really other than the above glossed over why's I couldn't really drill down to a specific reason.  Not easily.  

I think I was tired.  Tired of all the negative news.  Tired of the divide, the tension, the uncertainty.  

My sister and brother-in-law are waiting on the birth of their second child and also the death of his amazing father.  That's a lot of emotions and I'm only on the outside looking in. 

There's a local news story of a girl named Danielle who disappeared just before Christmas.  She left work and that was it, never heard from again.  This story has captured my attention and I can not watch the local news and see her parents speaking without ugly crying.  I see her beautiful face every day on Facebook. 

We are blessed with healthy children but I have friends whose kids have challenges, real health concerns, real dangers to their future and I know that on a dime our wonderful world could all come crashing down.  

I was just tired. I was overwhelmed. I needed to be uplifted.

So I did what I usually do, I jumped in with two feet and figured I'd learn how to swim while flailing around.

St. Baldricks was an easy choice - they help children.  They help families.  They help parents who sit on the sidelines feeling helpless and lost. This touched me.

Within 48 hours nearly $1100 has been raised towards my $5000 goal.  My social media was set ablaze! I was getting messages from friends and strangers sharing with me their personal stories and telling me how inspired or grateful or selfless I am for doing this.  In a weird way it was like being at my own funeral - you never typically get to hear people telling you such kind and wonderful things about yourself while you're still alive.  Each one of the compliments made me squirm.  I told my best friend "oh my God they're going to find out I'm a fraud.  That I still sometimes say shitty things or do shitty things. I try, but I am not really that good."

Reading your stories over the weekend (they all made me cry) has left me feeling humbled. Many times this weekend I was left speechless, not something that happens often in my world.  I am honored to honor you and to honor your loved ones.  The weight of that I feel and I take seriously. 

Instead of feeling anxious or nervous, now I feel proud to be a part of this.  Proud to be taking such a huge leap.  Proud to do something that made you feel the feels.  The good feels.

Yes, at the end of the road money will be turned over to St. Baldricks, my hair will be sent off for a very thick and long wig (or wigs) and families whose children are battling cancer will know for a moment that they aren't alone and that others care.  People will be honored.  Yes, those are all GREAT, GREAT things and I couldn't do this without supporting and believing in them. 

BUT I really just needed to send some love out.  I felt compelled to send something positive out into the world, and I needed that right now!! I did.  That motivation was not selfless, but rather selfish.  The end result remains the same and that's a great thing I'm proud to be a part of but my motivation was to feel uplifted, not exclusively to uplift.  There's a difference and I feel like a fraud when you kindly call me selfless.

I'm only 72 hours into this and I can tell you with 100% certainty (and that really annoying sentence we all hate) I will get more out of this then I possibly imagined and this will stay with me forever. 

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your donations, your support, you undeserving compliments and your sharing of this story.  St. Baldricks is an amazing organization doing wonderful work for Childhood Cancer research.  I am honored to be a part of their mission for the next few months.  I am thrilled to send some love and light out into the world.  I am grateful for the opportunity and the support.  The good Lord blessed me with the ability to run my mouth and keep no secrets.  It's nice on occasion to use that for good rather than stringing together a bunch of fuckitty-fucks and hitting publish.  

See what I did there.  I'm still just me. 

If the spirit moves you and you'd like to fork over some cash to this truly great cause, please use the link below.  As my accountant recently told us while we were itemizing - EVERYONE WINS when you donate to charity.  THANK YOU! 

https://www.stbaldricks.org/donations/received/participant/902148/2017

Who has two thumbs and is about to be bald? THIS GIRL!

About a month ago I came downstairs after a long quiet shower and while my husband was cooking eggs for the kids I dropped what I thought was going to be a bombshell.  He didn't even look up at me.  Without missing a beat he flipped the eggs frying in the pan and calmly responded "Ok babe, I'll support you in whatever."  So of course I picked a fight (I mistook his support for apathy) proving yet again that Mark really can't say anything right.  That poor man.  I am married to a great man - and he knew exactly who I was and what he was signing up for - somehow this still baffles me.  And, as it turns out, I really can't shock him anymore.  

I am shaving my head. As in bald. Totally bald. 

I am doing this for the St. Baldricks foundation at an event here in Michigan in May and I'll be hitting you up for a financial donation.  Cheers. 

Now that all my cards are on the table, let me also say I AM TERRIFIED!  

I keep telling my husband "oh my God I'm so scared" and my man looks at me and reminds me "that's a bullshit reason NOT to do something - come up with a better reason not too."  

Guess what?  I can't.  And I tried too, I really did.

This is actually the entire intent behind this post - this is my version of the dude who pushes you out of a plane when you sky dive. If I make it public, which I see as the ultimate commitment, then I can't just sit at home and spend the next two months wavering back-and-forth continuing to drive my hubby mad or chicken out last minute. Once it's out there I am committed, there's no going back.

So, I'm shaving my head. 

Not So Fun Fact:

Childhood cancers have risen 20% since 1975.  Brain cancers and soft tissue sarcomas have risen 25%.  

What. The. F*ck!

The good news is that mortality rates have decreased, research has improved, treatments expanded and we only learn more each and every day.  But it doesn't change the fact that every day, 43 parents are told "your child has cancer".  Wow.  I have no words for this and I rarely lack words.

After becoming a mom I was profoundly changed by my love for my kids and the idea of them battling cancer is just too much emotion to articulate.   

Moving outside of childhood cancers, breast cancer is also on the rise.  In the 60's 1 in 20 women were diagnosed with breast cancer.  Today it's 1 in 8, and the number of women who are genetically at risk - that number hasn't changed.  

Also increasing is the number of women ages 18-25 who are having a hard time getting pregnant or maintaining pregnancy.  That number is up FORTY PERCENT from 1982. 

Also on the rise, Autism, Allergies, ADHD and Asthma.

So the big question is "why"? 

I happen to be in a school of thought that one factor may be environmental.  It's why I am so passionate about Beautycounter and their mission.  It's also why you will rarely hear me talking about increasing government regulations except here. INCREASE THESE REGULATIONS PLEASE! The chemicals allowed into our personal care products are not at all regulated, there is no one making sure they are tested for health and safety the last time a law was passed concerning this was 1938. 

There's a local organization here in Michigan called Children With Hair Loss and they will accept donations of hair 8 inches or longer that has been colored.  My ponytail alone is 18 inches.  It's possible I have enough hair to make TWO, really thick, rather long, wigs.  These wigs are provided for free to children in need, but it costs about $1400 to make each wig. 

No Such Thing As a Selfless Good Deed

I don't want this (the shaving of the head) to come across as a humble brag or some sort of virtue signaling, both of those two things annoy the holy hell out of me.  I am just as scared of hearing "you're so brave" as I am to wake up the day after bald.  I'm not really that brave or that altruistic and I don't want to pretend that I am.  I'd like to be, but I don't think that I am, not yet.  The kids who have to start school bald - they are brave. The parents who are waiting on their child's brain scans - they are brave.  The woman who looses her hair outside of her control - she is brave.  The young girl who is diagnosed with cancer and undergoes a hysterectomy before becoming a mom- she is brave.  Me, I'm curious. I get to do this as a choice, many do not.

This idea already pretty much jives with the cloth from which I was cut.  I have a natural tendency to be dramatic and eccentric, and I really like to push my own boundaries for what I'm comfortable with (being bald, even for a short time is pretty outside of what I'm comfortable with).  However, as a functioning adult the healthy outlets for this personality are limited.  Joey Tribbiani said something wise and true when he taught us there is truly no such thing as a totally selfless good deed.  I'm not so secretly hoping to learn a thing or two about myself here - this seems like the ultimate way to say (to myself) no, you're not defined by something as silly or as superficial as hair or even traditional beauty standards - dig deeper.  This amazing charity allows me to see the other side of that mountain without a Brittney Spears style meltdown.  No, politics didn't get to me so badly that I'm shaving my head.  But yes, I'm in the mood to do something that feels unifying - raising money for cancer seems pretty unifying.  I'll probably get really into earrings and lipstick for awhile.  All in all, It's a win/win - my favorite of all the wins. 

I hope that you will support me in this endeavor.  Please help me in reaching my first goal of $1000. I couldn't think of a better way to come together, on something we all agree upon, and together support children and families during their darkest hours.  

If you go to this link https://www.stbaldricks.org/donate you can enter my name, Kristi See, and make a donation towards my goal. 

I'm sure leading up to this you'll hear more about it from me, some more on the why's the reasons I love Beautycounter and what they are doing to help clean up our products - and I'm sure they'll be a bit on my fear....but if I may talk in bumper sticker speak for a minute: Nothing good is usually easy and nothing easy is usually good.  I'm going to hang on to that one for awhile while I gear up.

Now, I just have to find the courage to hit "publish".  

Entitlement: That Sneaky Bastard

It took me a long time (and a GREAT therapist) to fully understand the notion of entitlement, and honestly future Kristi will probably think present day Kristi is full of shit.  She usually does. But the goal is to just keep getting a little bit better (age like a fine wine) and a little bit wiser.  So I think that if I look back and say "you were full of shit" it actually means I'm moving in the right direction.  This is one of those topics I believe I'll only understand and unravel more and more as I age, but for now a few thoughts on entitlement.

Classic (usually easy to spot) Entitlement Example:  I have an ex boyfriend who spent his entire life living off of his parents.  When we met he was closer to 40 than 30, living in his dads house rent free (as he had since college).  Literally some days he did not have one dollar to his name and yet felt no remorse, guilt or shame about being a non stop financial drain on everyone around him.  He was very generous with what he did have believing that what's mine is yours, so then also what's yours is mine.  He wasn't a bad guy, he was incredibly kind to me and affectionate, patient, interesting, engaging -  but he could not hold down a job, he had little interest in work or doing anything hard or un-fun (like paying bills).  He did not pay child support, he in fact did not feel obligated to pay child support.  He freely asked me to pay for everything and without limit:  his daughters school clothes, date nights, food, gas for his car, cigarettes, a vacation, a large chuck of change to finance his catering career....that he never worked at. Ever. His parents still paid for all his bills and when his car finally broke down it was his mom that got the loan for the repairs and it was I who was expected to rearrange my schedule so that I could take him to and from work and his daughter to and from school.  He had been sent to all the best private schools, provided with all the extra circulars, graduated honors from a top university and yet he had no ambition and no desire to adult.  He thought he was perfect just the way he was.  In fact when I finally broke it off, my last memory of him is his grown ass mantrum as he walked down my driveway shouting at me all of his amazing attributes.  (I get it, you read Dante's Inferno, I read The Notebook- now get a mother fucking job!) He was in utter disbelief that I was doing this - that this was happening to him.

*Now, why I dated a man for nearly a year who couldn't adult and broke every boundary I had estabolished  for myself - that's for another day, but there were no victims here only 2 unhealthy mindsets.

Not so easy to spot entitlement: When Victimhood Leads to Entitlement

The book that I'm reading right now, (and that's provoking a lot of these thoughts and trips down memory lane) is The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck, and the author defines entitlement in one of two ways:

1. I'm awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment
2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment

"Opposite mindset on the outside, but the same selfish creamy core in the middle." -Mark Manson

My take away in reflecting on my path, is the idea that something bad happened to me and that makes me special.  You believe or live in a way that says, your pain/experience is unique,no one else has felt pain or stress like this before and that your pain gives you license to act or live in a way that's unhealthy.  This belief or lifestyle then reinforces that you are a victim, which reinforces your unhealthy thoughts, which lead to more unhealthy actions and none of this is within your control.  Everyone needs to just accept that 'this is me' - because you know, you're special or damaged or hurting or misunderstood or something...

Victimhood Entitlement Example: Me  

Something bad happened to me, which made me feel all the feels and then I didn't want to feel all the feels anymore - it was too intense.  So I just buried my pain which eventually led to feeling angry, angsty and emotionally charge all the time - a bit of a bitch and definitely selfish.  I was rude and defiant to my parents, because fuck you I'm in pain so I'll do what I want.  I did all the drugs, because fuck you I'm in pain so I'll so what I want.  I dated many of (not all of) the wrong guys, because fuck you I'm in pain so I'll do what I want.  I married and then divorced one of the wrong guys because fuck you my pain is driving this train and my pain made me do it.  I had zero accountability for my actions or my emotions - I was only on defense, only ever reacting, and doing so without any personal responsibility.  Even though on the surface I talked about "surviving" I was stuck in a perpetual loop of feeling like, and then acting like, a victim.  I was stuck believing my pain was special or unique and so I was entitled to act how I wanted to because feeling this pain was too great a burden for you to ask of me.  If you could just feel how I felt you'd of known that and you'd of understood I was doing the best I could.  *cough, cough, bullshit!* All of my choices for years where driven by either chasing cheap thrills or avoidance of pain. Usually both at the same time, I multitask like a beast!  Does it bring me joy? Does it numb my pain? Yes? Great, then cut me up another line, pass me another cookie, pour me another drink, buy me another new outfit, bring home another guy.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Something I ask my toddler a lot is: "will what you're doing right now bring you closer to or further from a consequence?  Well, for maybe half of my life all of my choices brought me closer to rather than further from - I was a mess and I was deeply unhappy.  Not much of a survivor I'd say.

Somewhere right around turning 30 two things happened that I think made a crucial shift for me.

My Turning Point

1. I very simply realized everyone has their shit! Everyone.  Certainly what life hurls at us isn't all weighted the same - the loss of a child or a spouse is arguably far more devastating than say the loss of a job.  However, when we begin ranking whose shit is worse or more damaging (even just within our own mind) it's not just unhealthy it's useless. It's all relative in regards to your personal experiences and perspective.  If your shit is the worst thing to ever happen to you then that is just as terrible and devestating as someone else's shit that is the worst thing to ever happen to them.  You're both left devastated, essentially leveling the playing field.  You both have to figure out how, or if you even want to cope and move forward.  I (with admittedly zero clinical experience or psychological education other than my own therapy, so take my options as just that, opinions) believe that coping skills are learned out in the field.  You learn how to handle shit when shit is handed to you, or you learn how to avoid shit when shit is handed to you.  It's one or the other.   Then the next time, when new shit is thrown your way, you go -  "oh, I remember how to handle shit" and you use your new skill.  But this time it doesn't work, so you have to chose to try something new or chose to avoid handeling the shit.   Now the next shit is thrown your way you go "Oh, I have multiple tools for handling  shit".  Or if you've been avoiding it, which is still a choice and an action, then you pile more shit onto your ever growing shit pile.  This pile doesn't just go away though, it will grow and grow until eventually it's forced to eat away at you clearing real estate to support your sprawling pile of shit.  And so this cycle repeats itself for your entire life!!!  Anyone who is waiting until the skies part and the clouds clear to "be happy" will be very disappointed in life.  You're going to have plenty of blue skies, but then just like that the storm clouds will roll back in and you'd better be prepared to either stand in the rain or open up your umbrella.  THIS is how we learn to deal - by actually doing it.  No one is special here and gets to line-hop this part of life.  Deep, gut wrenching, agonizing pain and extreme stress are emotions we will all experience - over and over.  It's just part of the design.  Life is easier when we accept and make peace with this.  You don't always get a say in what life throws at you but you ALWAYS get a say in how you react to it, IF you react to it and what you allow yourself to learn from it as you move forward.  That part is on you.


2. I began to focus on gratitude and I used this practice to stop perseverating and to shift my values.  Whatever emotional high I was chasing evolved as I did.  In my 20's it was drugs and boys.  In my late 20's when I had a solid income it was stuff.  I bought a lot of stuff, and it always made me feel good...and then it didn't, so I'd go out and buy more stuff.  My second greatest vice during this time: wallowing.  I could sit for a week at a time listening to David Gray, smoking pot, writing alone in my house just entertaining all my misery and self loathing and self pity.  I wasn't sorting through my pain, just swimming around it it for some kind of sadistic fun.  Look how special and tortured and sad I am...this is why I make so many bad choices.  This is why bad things happen to me.  I may not have expressed this outwardly, but if I really listened to myself, if I was really honest then yes, I felt entitled to be miserable.  I felt that I had earned the right to be like this.  I felt like a victim over and over - nothing was ever really my fault and everything happening was out of my control.  Maybe God was punishing me or maybe God just didn't exist, but in no way could I be bringing this shit storm upon myself.  That was ludicrous! Even that nice, interesting, entitled boyfriend of mine - how could the universes finally allow me to meet someone so great who just couldn't adult?  I must be destined for the long and rocky road in life.

Around this time I was writing grad papers for a friend of mine for fun (I know.  Don't worry, she was in charge of puncuation) and the book the class was studying was Franklin Covey's 7 Habit's.  I remember being inspired by the questions he was asking you to ask of yourself and so for the first time ever I used his tools and began to practice the action of picking my thoughts.  I figured what's the worst that could happen? I activly tried to change the way I spoke to myself, I tried to change the dialogue I had within my own head and I wanted to focus on the places in my life where I was doing a good job.  I also wanted to change the measures I used for defining myself.  Mark Manson calls a similar process a shift in values, evaluating and then seeking to change what you chose to give a fuck about.  When I was able to begin appreciating and acknowledging the worthwhile parts of myself and my life,  and really evaluate the fucks I was giving it opened up the door to then evaluate and change the metrics that I used to measure my own success.  Previously I felt good about my self if say, I had a boyfriend who felt good about me.  (Have you ever only seen yourself through the reflection of someone else's eyes? Yeah dude - super shitty way to function.  That's how you end up with a starter marriage - but I digress.)  I would measure myself by whether or not I was winning at work or if I was able to buy what I wanted and when or if I weighed a certain amount or clocked in enough gym time.  These were only some of the unhealthy values I used for myself and just the beginning of my long process, and still active desier to change them.

So what happened then?

I began to finally, and constructively, not just feel my own pain but sort through it and move past it.  I began to hold myself accountable for my thoughts, my emotions, my reactions and then ultimatly my own actions.  This didn't magically made me some kind of mental wizard or Mother Theresa- but when I flew off the handle or responded based solely on emotion I took ownership of that and I tried to do it better the next time.  For the first time ever I sat and kind of autopsied my past choices and it was in dissecting these choices (and their end results) that I continued to learn a lot about how I processed, the values I defined myself by and if it was healthy.  Spoiler: It was not.  This process, while vital to shifting values and fucks given, didn't feel very good.  I'd been a bit of a dick for a really long time and I had to own that.  I ended a marriage, which devastated someone, and one of the many reasons we didn't work out was that I had been functioning solely in "does it feel good" land.  That part was on me - I had to own that.  If I could make this blog interactive this is when a flock of doves flies out at you and hallelujah music begins to play, maybe a cliche movie rainstorm with a rainbow - it needs to be that dramatic because this mental shift of mine was THAT dramatic.  It was also just the beginning.  Think of this like a game of golf or yoga - you never really master it, you just get a little bit better than the last time and that's your measuring stick for present success.

Ultimately my take away from both my personal experience and in what I've witness of others is that when you try to cheat your way out of feeling pain or when you hide from that pain by chasing superficial pleasures you're missing out on growth.  Your entitlement is denying you a critical part of this entire journey, it's shaping the values you measure yourself by and you're relinquishing the enormous power of being able to be the Architect of your new design.  I have a weakness for 90's country - Rodney Atkins sings about going through hell and I love the line when he says "you ask directions from a genie in a bottle of Jim Beam and she lies to you" You can swap out "Jim Beam" for any number of things, but ultimatly when entitlement, or role as a victim,  causes you to go looking for answers or distrations in bullshit places, you get bullshit answers in return - every damn time!

Wine and Rhetoric

I write a blog.  This is basically the grownup version of "Dear Diary".  I am not writing a cookbook or a how-to, I am sharing my personal philosophy on life.  I am allowing a reader to understand how I process, why I process like that and I'm attempting to describe what the world looks like to ME, through MY lens.  

There are some things I will never write about.  You the reader will know that I was married before.  I will joke about or discuss the lessons I learned within or after that marriage but the specifics, what it was really like, what happened, him - those are not things I will ever discuss.  

I will never tell someone else's story.  I do not write a blog about others, I write a personal blog and so it's only MY story and MY emotions that I write about.  

I was hurt as a child - don't ever expect to read a recap of those events.  The specifics aren't really that important or special.  That experience itself isn't actually that unique.  My experience doesn't make me special - millions of people have felt similar pain.  People felt that before me, they felt that with me and they will feel that long after I am gone. I actually find enormous comfort in knowing that.  What's important to ME are the emotions, the takeaway, how I processed it all, what I allowed it to do to me or how I took back control of my life afterwards.  That is what I share, or attempt to. 

I imagine if you the reader subscribe to a different religious, political, parenting and overall life philosophy from mine, toss in a healthy dose of your own life experiences - then anything that I write may to you, look like "what the fuck you crazy person, NO, no, no, it's actually more like THIS."  

Or perhaps you'll just think "wow this person's an asshole."

I suppose that's the risk I take when I allow anyone a window into my soul.  

But, you, the reader - you also have a choice.  Whether it's my blog or life in general you have a choice.  You have a choice to click on my posts and read them or not.  You have a choice in life when you meet someone whose personal philosophy differs from yours in how you let that move your needle.  You can meet them with nothing but open opposition (and sometimes I suppose that's okay)  or you can just go, "huh, I think differently.  This is not a place I'm going to find a connection.  Next"

I feel like as a society though we are in some weird and unhealthy place where we feel that anyone who says or does anything that offends us must be met with out greatest, biggest opposition, because how dare they! 

Sometimes it's okay to just let it go. 

If the same reader is constantly reading my writing and it's doing nothing but causing them opposition or frustration then perhaps I'm the wrong blogger for that reader.  We very simply may not view the world anywhere near the same; and that's OKAY.  We don't have to.  

I'm a sponge.  I take in a stupid amount of external stimulus.  I can usually feel the emotions of those around me.  I empathize incredibly well.  My super powers are reading body language and facial expressions and honestly the air around you.  If we are sharing the space I can usually tell what you think of me even when you aren't saying it.  It's actually not such a super power - it's overwhelming.  This is why I kicked ass at sales.  It was my job to be able to walk into any room, size you up and then connect with you all the while leaving you to feel as though it was organic.  I've done this my entire life, even as a child and usually without putting a great deal of thought into it.  This ability to connect (or morph into what I think you want/need) with so many people is why my 70 year old liquor store guy called me to help him on the day he mistakenly ate a pot brownie, even though our interactions have always been limited to me buying vodka from him.  I get people.  An occupational hazard of this: It's really easy to loose myself, to forget MY truth.  This was one of my biggest  mistakes and something I have to accept accountability for within my first marriage.  How could I possibly function in marriage if I had no idea who I was anymore.  Perhaps it's now, years later, what propels me to write, to expel it all back out into the universe in order to find myself clearly again.  It's too much to keep inside.  Almost everything I read or see or take in moves my needle and after awhile the constant feedback coming from every angle well  it changes how I think, which changes how I act, which effects how I react.  Or in this specific instance, it changes how I write.  

A blog has to be a safe place for a writer to tell their story, with their words about their experiences and they have an obligation to do so with respect to those around them.  That doesn't mean if Mark and I have a fight that I will never write about how I felt when we fought - because I know that ALL couples fight.  It means the specifics, who was right or wrong or the asshole, all the dirty details- that's not the real story I am trying to tell.  That's not the important part.    

This will never be a trashy gossip page where you can come and learn about the specifics of my life's drama.  This will however be a place where you might read about how I felt when I was met with criticism (which anyone is entitled to deliver) and how I learned to process that.  You may hear about any number of emotional events but the story isn't the event, it's the outcome.  It's how I made sense of it all.  And, in this space, it will always be about ME.  

I can only tell MY story. 

This blog is called Wine and Rhetoric.  When I set out to create a blog I thought of all the thousands of porch conversations and wine nights and stories told and passions exchanged and the millions of words that I have spoken over all the years and I wanted THIS to resemble that.  To feel like you're sitting on a porch with me, after two glasses of wine, and we're dropping truth bombs with utter abandoment.  I love a grand tale, hyperbole, passionate language, animated gestures (read this and picture my arms flailing about as I speak) and I naturally and always have spoken as if to persuade.  It doesn't make what I have to say the ultimate truth or real or law or fact - I'm just a girl, with a blog asking you to let me run MY mouth. (I can actually see Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant while I write that.  I'm also super dorky.) 

As a reader you have a choice.  Actually I believe in life as a person you always have a choice.  You get to choose how you react or if you even react at all (which is still a choice and then no reaction is actually still a reaction, which will bring on more events, that you will then have to choose how you react to - or if you even react at all. THIS NEVER ENDS) You get to choose what you the reader takes away from this and it could be wildly different than my original intent based on you, your life, your mindset.  You also as the reader are choosing to be here. You're choosing to click on my blog, open it up, read what's going on in MY mind and take in how I see things and then you get choose to 1. remain  neutral about my options 2. you can let my opinions move your needle and/or 3. you can choose to engage with me about my opinions.  Those are your choices. 

When I write I write knowing though that sometime I just can't engage.  Sometimes I just write to write, to put it out there, to cleanse my head of all the shit and I can't always defend how I process, why I process or how I feel - it just is.  

The minute I begin to question whether or not I can honestly share my emotions, my story or my view point (without offending) is the the day I have to stop writing.  This is the one place in the universe that gets to be all about me.  

It's funny to hear my husbands reactions when I talk about something I may have written, and he's incredibly supportive.  However, he often has a completely different view of any one situation we were in together.  We are different people.  We see things differently.  We will always see things differently.  We value that difference and we are learning how to not always meet the other with opposition but how to seek to understand a mindset or an experience that may seem foreign.  

So, Wine and Rhetoric - it's mine.  It's my place.  It's my thoughts.  It's my crazy.  It's my views.  

Everything after that really is up to you the reader.  When I said I don't give one teeny, tiny fuck it was because I was (in an incredibly sarcastic tone) was saying, I can't give all the fucks.  It's not possible.  It's not healthy.  OF course I give a fuck, I don't want to hurt anyone - but if I am writing only about me, how I felt, my emotions and how I make sense out of it all, then I can't give a teeny tiny fuck if you don't agree with me.  I'm not writing a blog to win over an opinion, I'm just sharing mine. 

Marriage: That shit is hard

Anyone else ever wake up to a perfectly fine morning and then just like that it all shifts and you think: "That's it! Today's the day I kill my husband."

*Listen up! This is hyperbole.  I'm being incendiary and sarcastic and speaking figuratively.  If you LITERALLY kill your spouse you're probably an asshole and you deserve a long time in jail to reflect on that.  We on the same page? Ok.  Sweet.

I'm married to the most wonderful, dynamic, thoughtful, considerate, interesting man and today I want to punch him in the dick.  Marriage.

There's a bullshit notion floating around our society that one person (like a spouse) is supposed to complete us, fill us up, make us whole, be our everything all the time no matter what.  It's supposed to be all passion all the time where everyone walks around with sex hair and a smile on their face and we all agree on how to spend the money.   

Come in close.  Closer.  A little closer...now, listen up....

THAT IS FUCKING FANTASY LAND!!!! 

If that's what you're after, get a dog.  

Marriage, at it's best, is knowing you choose an imperfect person, to build an imperfect life with and that sometimes you're going to slam a door in someones face and that shitty days with shitty attitudes are perfectly normal.  They happen.  Building a life with someone is really hard - life is really hard! Why do we assume we are entitled to be happy and fulfilled all the damn time inside the bubble of marriage?  The goal is obviously to minimize the amount of shitty days and slammed doors, who the fuck wants to live like that all the time (or even most of the time) but sometimes you're just not going to be in the mood to be someones everything.  It's a lot to ask of a person - to complete you and all. It's a lot to expect someone to anticipate your every wish and desire and then punish them when they come up short.  Sometimes a bullshit expectation will very simply yield you a bullshit response.  

Something you'll hear out of my mouth or see in my writings a lot is this: You cannot have it all, all at the same time.  

I apply this to life about a hundred times a day.  It's my adulating mantra.  

I cannot marry a complicated, dynamic, unique individual (traits I celebrate) and then expect them to think and act just like me.  

I cannot marry someone who thinks and acts just like me and then expect there to be surprises and passion or wonder why I'm so bored or not challenged.

I married a man, it's not reasonable to ask him to process like a woman.  

He married a woman, it's not reasonable for him to expect me to process like a man.

So shit is going to happen.  Marriage is going to be hard.  It's supposed to be HARD! If it was easy there would be no reward, no value, no reason to remain invested other than sharing the responsibility of cleaning dirty dishes and dragging the trash outside.  That I can do all by myself - I'm in this for something more.  Something meaningful.  

See those resting bitch faces?
Mine. xoxo

So rather then spending my day compiling a list of all the reasons I have a right to be mad or hurt and digging deep into the archives to throw out old shit at him (because nothing solves one problem like hurling 15 more at someone) I'm going to spend the day thinking about how many great things my husband does for me and our family, how fortunate we are. I'm going to focus on all of his good traits and the things I love most about him (like his resting bitch face - I do, I love it!)  I'm going to spend the day reminding myself that I'm not perfect either and that I'm pretty hard to live with myself.  I'm a fucking crazy person too and I'm fortunate to have a great partner who doesn't spend nearly as much time as I do asking me to read his mind or articulating my short comings.  

You really can't give all the fucks...

I'm taking a social media break, trying to sort out how I use social media and what value it gives back  to me.  I've struggled with a love/hate relationship with Facebook for years.  Recently, I just couldn't take it anymore.  Every time I opened my phone I was opening my own personal gateway to hell - Mark Manson, my new writer crush, calls this "the feedback loop from hell".  It was so wonderful to be able to attach words to my frustration and unsettledness. It really is the feedback loop from hell!! Thank you dude!!

It's not just the politics (although it's a lot of the politics right now) it's the other bullshit too that I give a lane on the superhighway right into my life, my mind, my subconscious. I realized that I couldn't just remain neutral.  All of it one way or another moved my needle, and that became exhausting.   Maybe it was that we haven't seen the sun in Michigan in a fucking month, or that it's assumed currently that if you don't subscribe to one popular set of beliefs it's because you are acting without thought (that one really angers me.  In fact I'm going to sit and overthink about how much that one bugs me) or maybe it's all the finger pointing and blaming or the mindless dribble from pop culture, but I was getting bitter and I don't like bitter.

Men's Health writes an article, "How to tell if your heading towards a sexless marriage" I'm bored, scrolling through Facebook so I take the click bait - and there it is, in black and white - words telling that that because we sleep on opposite sides of the bed, routinely, we are heading towards a vanilla marriage where no one gets laid and everyone acts like an asshole.  Fuck! No asterisk for me that says *unless your snore like a 300 pound frat boy (yeah, that's me.), then award your husband the metal of honor for sleeping in the same room, night after night, and don't worry about the sex - you have two babies under 3.  That shit will iron itself out.  So I do that thing that husbands love - I start a fight about nothing because I got some bullshit in my head and I let it get the best of me...THAT is his favorite of my crazy traits.  That usually doesn't do much to help the sex either.

Some parenting journal or blogger writes some shit about how kids shouldn't be made to share.  Ironically moms share that article on Facebook like chronic at a music festival: "here, hit this! It's great!"  So I read this garbage that 5 billion people liked and I think "what the fuck is wrong with me, I kind of think learning to share is a big deal.  No one likes an asshole" and now I'm questioning all of my parenting techniques.  Which you know as a parent really means you're just questioning yourself.

Last summer after I posted "A prayer for my children" I had one of the biggest fights with a friend I've ever had.  I typically don't fight with friends - it was super foreign and deeply upsetting to me.  When we got past the trigger that the post was in poor timing (for personal events in our lives), she told me that she just thought it was mean, the idea, the words -she found them mean and unsympathetic.  I valued her opinion as a close friend.  So what did I do? I obsessed for DAYS - was I cruel? Did I hurt someone? Was my idea that "life is going to suck at times, that this will remain constant throughout your life, so make some peace with it" cold or insensitive? Eventually I added a disclaimer to the post.  You know, just in case you don't see the world the way I do and you believe I'm trying to pass this all off as truth...and this bothered me for a long time.  I don't ever attempt to be mean, quite the opposite, I enjoy making people feel empowered, helping people to feel good about exactly who they are right now.  But I held on to this, I held onto the words when she told me that if I'm going to put my opinions out there, I have to be prepared to defend them.  I suppose that has (in my mind) some half truth to it.  I'm happy to discuss my opinions, elaborate further but since I do not believe my opinions are fact, defending them as if they are fact, defending myself for having an opinion you disagree with - not really something I'm interested in doing.

Also, you're (not just one person, the global "you" here) YOU are welcome to just say; "I disagree, now I'll move along."

I got caught in the feedback loop from hell.

After that I began to question everything I wrote: Is this kind? Will I offend someone? Is my belief wrong? Then politics happened and now I'm seeing things daily that are personally attacking good people that I know and love.  Not their political position, but the actual person.  Their character, their morality, their level of perceived kindness or goodness.  It upsets me and I'm not hardwired for being quietly upset without a release.  I'd be a horrible stonewaller.  I'd last seconds. 

The kicker last week was seeing the status of a "friend" that read: I'm done being polite - if you're not mad as hell we don't want you in our fucking lives right now! And it got like 200 hearts.  My take away was: if you don't subscribe to exactly what I feel and believe then fuck you, go away, I'd like to sit and listen only to people who parrot back exactly what I say - the rest of you hold no value to me.   And 200 people supported that with passion.  I couldn't deal.  The fucking feedback loop from hell, so fuck it.  I finally took a much needed break, because this superhighway of feedback is unhealthy, unproductive and it keeps me from actually engaging in my own life.

In all of this shit I was taking in, the static and white noise, the ridiculous desire to write without offending anyone - I forgot the most important thing: A blog (or my Facebook page) are my words. And it SHOULD be for me.  Once it stops being that, it's all shit.  My new favorite author reminded me of that.

I was stuck trying to give all the fucks. 

I do not write with an intention to piss people off, and I do not write with an intention to make people agree with me.  I write for me.  It's that simple.

How I imagine I look giving no fucks

You do not have to agree with me.  You don't have to think I'm right. I am okay with that...well now I am.  I do not need to be corrected or enlightened and I don't need to be validaded - my thoughts are well thought out, whether you like them or not. You may choose to find my words mean or insensitive or thoughtless or ignorant - I don't give one teeny, tiny fuck.  I don't give a teeny tiny fuck because I'm indifferent or I'm out to hurt you, I don't give a teeny tiny fuck because I know that's not my intention.  I cannot write from a completely vulnerable or honest place while simultaniously worrying about how it will be interpreted or if the reader walks away with something other than my original intent.  It would drive me mad.  How you digest what I'm tossing out there, whether you even pay attention to it,  that's up to you.  When I sit down to write I am expelling all the bullshit that's been swimming around in my brain, being picked over and disected and over analyzed.  I write when the only way to purge my brain and find relief is to put pen to paper.  I not so secretly hope that you connect with my words, but I enjoy emotional intimacy so I eat that shit up like candy.   At the end of it all it's really up to you, not me. These are words from my brain based on my experiences and how I sort through them and make sense out of life.   You get to have your own place.  I support that!!   So you can have all the opinions you desire about me but respectfully I no longer wish to know of them all.  Some of them get to be just yours.  I know of only one truth and that is that these words are MY truth and that's all that matters. To me. You choose what matters to you.

To the 3 people that read this blog, if you haven't read Mark Manson's work I recommend it.  Per usual I was late to the party, but when all the cool kids were listening to 2 Pac I was rocking out to Joni Mitchell so I've grown accustomed to my late arrivals.