Molotovs > Fireworks

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 4 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My “Secret Subject” is:

How do you celebrate the 4th of July?

It was submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

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I've answered this question before in a way, but that time I made it more or less about hating fireworks and having trauma related to my dad getting drunk and my parents fighting every holiday and especially the 4th because it's my mom's birthday. And that still remains true. Im not really big on the holiday at the best of times..

But I'll be honest here, what the fuck is there to celebrate anyway? Fascism? Loss of rights? Being terrified to be an out queer person for the first time in a fucking long time? No healthcare? Ignoring a pandemic? Essentially sending people to work in a pandemic to keep the capitalism train moving and then also removing access to free tests and vaccines? A president who won't even say the word abortion or at least didn't for his first 2 years in office much less have a real plan to address it? A president who, on the way roe was overturned and knowing it was coming like we all did, had plans to appoint a lifetime federal judge position to an extreme antiabortion Republican? A country that will make Juneteenth a federal holiday but won't let people talk about the implications of racism on this country's foundation and its presence in our system to children in history classes? A country who will give more rights to guns than people? A country that cares about the lives of babies unless they're shot to death in school classrooms? A country that will make every excuse possible for a police to kill an unarmed person especially ESPECIALLY if they're a person of color?

I guess it would be a lot easier to celebrate the birth of this nation if it wasnt so hard for those of us who live here and have been othered in it. If it didn't carry a risk of discrimination and death just for looking or being different. If it didn't mean old fucking losers with too much power didn't feel entitled to keep the poor begging for scraps and the othered to die with nothing. It would be so much easier to pop off some fireworks if Democrats didn't somehow hinge their 50 years of failures on Bernie once again or Susan Sarandon or those of us who ever vocally criticize one of their politicians....you know the same party that paid for ads for an NRA A-rated, pro life democrat in Texas in no danger of losing their seat the day after children were gunned down in a school while the police (which Democrats gladly keep over funding) stood by in the same fucking state.

Fuck this country. There's nothing here to celebrate.

Whenever this country slides further into fascism, so many people always share that quote that says "don't fall into despair. Let this radicalize you." But somehow that means vote for the same people who never gave a shit about you to begin with and share bullshit meaningless memes. I'm sorry but in an oligarchy, voting is never a radical act. It's the very least you could possibly do.

Celebrate what?

A country still deeply in the throws of Satanic Panic and antisemitism? That still falls for conspiracies build on the foundation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which we know was made up entirely to excuse antisemitism? A country so caught up in fear, exploitation, and the art of the grift that a man could spiral so far down the rabbit whole in a couple months that he became willing to kill his own children with a spearfishing gun? That could look his 10 month old in the face and think that was the best he could do for that child? 

A leftist spectrum that thinks making a Facebook profile named Lenin Bussy Marx and sharing low quality memes is praxis? The ones who have 392 comment threads on Twitter arguing about what a 200 years dead white dude would think about a grifting YouTuber who made millions passing off propaganda about the Syrian civil war? The same leftists who think any country that isn't the U.S. is fine and good no matter what they're doing to their own people?

And the worst thing of all is that we aren't actively attempting to address ANY of it. 

Will I celebrate? Do I?

No thanks. I'll be sleeping in and watching Scooby Doo and everything else can go fuck itself.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Like Father Like Daughter

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: disguise, darkness, treats, street, thankful

they were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

If we are friends on social media, you might have already seen the bones of this post there. My birthday was on sept 26, and with my dad having been buried on my birthday, every year it's a lot. i spend too much of it reflecting on difficult things, honestly. but i wanted this written on my blog, so I adapted it for this post. thanks for reading. 

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Sometimes I wonder how I turned out this way-- far left, outspoken, loudly queer, and nonreligious. I wonder how I could've grown like a dandelion in a sidewalk crack, flourishing despite the madness of everything around me, despite everything that tried to kill me, in spite of those things. How did I find my own way in bumfuck, georgia? So many people I know walked around in disguises to fit in, and I never could not when it came to being proud of who I was. How did the queerness peep its lovely head out and never stop pushing for the beauty of a life outside of the darkness? How did it find just the right bit of brokeness in the sidewalk that was my outer shell and break it wide open?

Maybe it was my dad...which is hard to admit since I hated him for so long with everything I had in me.

No exaggeration.

I've talked at length about how being a kid was for me. I've reaped the benefits of analyzing, publicly, The Things I Went Through shining a light on the abuse and the drug use and the Trauma™ and young me fighting for life and wanting to die all at the same time. It's kinda cliche but his dying left a lot for me to figure out with zero closure. I'd hold up a bit of myself to the light and wonder if these characteristics were tricks or were they treats? Somewhere along the way I realized this person, my dad, gave me so many trauma responses and complexes AND some of the things of love best about myself.

Like maybe how i exist in spite of what everyone believes about people like me.

We're country folk. Rural is a word people might use, but rural doesn't encapsulate the experience of the vastness of land and cows and coyotes and the relative absence of people. I grew up on a plot of land and a house my dad built himself with the help of friends and with some of my grandparents' money and the rest he got from selling cocaine. That land was bordered by a pair of dirt rows and a couple fields. You had to travel a few miles to get to paved road that even still really couldn't be called a street. Two cars couldn't fit without rolling on someone's yard a little. Land still yet untamed especially when darkness fell much like this man that helped shape who I would end up being and wanting to be.

I still meet people in the area--Im still in the general vicinity--who knew him and regale me with tales of him being the first person to have consistent supply of coke for these kinds of folks. He was the man to go to if you needed a fix, and it didn't matter too much what it was. If he didn't have it, he could probably get it. Look at that hairstyle and tell me they're lying.

 

My grandma told me stories about him hating school, about getting in trouble...about how she found a weed plant drying out in her backseat and just drove on to town to get groceries anyway, about the first time they got an antenna installed, and she had to ask the man to leave because when she went to check the shop roof by ladder, she could see the pot plants up there before she even made it to the top.

This cop hating, moonshine distilling, weed growing, coke selling, shroom loving, hairy son of a bitch raised me, and I reckon it shows. He defied standards and expectations. He broke the law when he wanted to make a buck or to have a little fun. He did everything in his power to not be his parents--country folk who pretended they weren't, perfectionist walk-the line parents, "what will people think" parents. Amazing to think someone like my dad could come from that.

I know how it must have felt all those years.

He fucking sucked at being a good father, but he did show me how to carve my own path and laugh in the face of anyone who stood in my way. I learned from him when to harden myself against a world that wanted to break me even though I had to learn on my own when it was ok to be soft. He taught me that laws aren't always just, that cops can't be trusted, the best wine comes from grapes you grew yourself, and corn whiskey ain't good unless it's made illegally at 3 a.m. on your carport while your kids pull peanuts off the plants you took as part of your payment for welding some shit on a farm. He also had a day job.

Sometimes I struggle with the memories I have of the man, but the older I get and the deader he is, the more I can separate him from the nightmares and appreciate what I did have instead of longing for what I didn't get. We buried him on my birthday in 2006. It's impossible to separate my birthday from my dad, and for the last couple years at least, that hasn't been a bad thing. Sometimes I might get to thinking I'm not so broken anymore.

Just gonna lean into it and be thankful I had someone to teach me to be my own person, always.

There's no shame in being my father's child. Not anymore. Not ever again. 

______________________

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Pipe dreams

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

What makes a place a “happy place”?

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/  

*I'm not sure this is the answer anyone was really looking for, but given this entire year, it's all I can think about.

 
**I'm going to try to do this as succinctly as possible because there are decades worth of conflicts and multiple acronymed organizations at play with my answer. I don't want to lose you along the way, so be gentle if you're already aware of the background. I'm trying to make this easier for anyone who has no idea about it to understand. 

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I think many of us in America who existed and were aware of society in the years following 9-11 have a kind of collective PTSD. Maybe that seems obvious because what happened on that day did, in fact, change a lot about this country and how we view the issues of privacy vs freedom, but it was also that post 9-11 world that led us to the Iraq war, to the lies we were told about the intent and reasoning for the Iraq war, to the loss of life and years of meaningless fighting.

Iraq was our Vietnam. And it left it's mark.

Now anytime any mention of foreign aid or intervention hits the news we collectively stick our fingers in our ears and hum to drown it all out. If we don't know anything about it, it will be fine. If we don't know, then is it really happening? And we assume, because the lies of Iraq burned us so badly, that more lies are being told to try to get us to care about people that don't look like us or live here.

That's what happened with Syria and how our collective trauma cost almost a million Syrian lives (so far?). No one wanted to believe Bashar al Assad was doing the things he was accused of--things he was most definitely guilty of--because if we did, there we were involving ourselves in yet another Middle Eastern country's problems when it had always gone so badly before and really why couldn't we let them solve their own shit.

Why can't entire regions stabilize and take care of themselves after decades of behind the scenes u.s. coups and shit? Hm. I wonder.

Anyway.

Obama understood that collective PTSD, I guess, and so we stood by while barrel bombs, torture chambers, and chemical weapons were used to decimate any dissent. More than twice as many people were killed by torture in Syria's prisons than in the entire near decade of conflict in Libya. That doesn't even begin to include all the other methods Assad used on his own people while his wife bought thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and joked about being the real dictator.

And that's the basic gist of it. People in the Middle East were rising up against mistreatment by dictators throughout the region in the early 2010s beginning in Tunisia. When Assad took over for his father in the early part of the century, he'd dangled a few carrots of freedom over the people and just as quickly snatched them back when he found out most people don't really care to be ruled by a dictator, so it's kind of surprising he didn't predict the dominoes of rebellion falling in "his" country as well, but I guess being a dictator makes you get a little too full of yourself. Dictators take huge gambles, and this time, he made a mistake thinking he had full control of things.

well. Sort of. He also bet that we wouldn't interfere, that no one would, if he had to quell any uprisings and in that way he was 100% correct. 

The people of Syria were tired of their leader and his family profiting off the land while mostly living in poverty, tired of knowing what could be if he wasn't ruling after all he'd given them a taste himself, so rebellion was guaranteed especially for the Kurds.

The Kurds are an ethnic group living in regions of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. The vast majority of these people consider themselves Muslim, but they also have their own language, customs, and culture--non-Arab Muslims. And in Syria, even through they're the largest ethnic minority in the country, they have been denied statehood meaning they are not recognized as members of the country but also cannot leave the country because not enjoying statehood means no passports for travel, no recognized identification, etc. Not only that, Assad kept up the tradition of attempting to erase Kurdish culture that has existed in this region. In order to be a member of Syria, the Kurds must give up their practices, their language--everything about their ethnic identity--to assimilate.

When civil war broke out, Kurds were a large force in the rebellion. No one wants to be erased. And with the instability of Syria and the attacks by ISIS attempting to take advantage of that instability, the Kurds in Syria were able to create Rojava. Think something like what happened in Seattle during protests but better organized, armed, and with a solid ideology--a sort of leftist's paradise (besides the constant threats of violence) and an smallish scale experiment of how leftist ideas could be modernized for a working society now. 

As I said as a disclaimer in the beginning, this is dramatically oversimplified, but if you're interested in the more in-depth story, you can find those details online anywhere, but Rojava is the important part of this story, because I feel like if I had a happy place, it would be similar.

Rojava is based on the ideology of Murray Bookchin, an American leftist, learned by the Kurdish activist Abdullah Öcalan (Apo) while he was in a prison in Syria. So a Kurdish activist in Syria led a revolution from prison based on literature from the United States. The things that had to line up for this to occur are pretty amazing. Apo created a system after reading Bookchin called Democratic confederalism which operates on the ground in a very anarchist way. It's based on self organization as a whole that focuses on environmentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, self defense, and a sharing economy. Power is distributed from bottom to top not top down as in our system. Local community groups handle most of the problems and distribute for social programs as well as taking on most of the defense of their particular areas. And if a problem can't be solved locally, it goes to a higher community level. There isn't so much a heirarchy as a horizontal passing of issues. And all the committees and communes and organizations in charge of decision making are directly elected by the people in the communities they represent.

Women, life, and freedom.

That's one of the most common slogans of Rojava. While in prison, Apo came to understand that the patriarchal society he'd grown up in was flawed and that if society was going to move forward and be successful, women would have to hold the same positions in life as men. Women's importance and right to power and equitable treatment is written right into the constitution. Women took up arms and gave their lives to help fight off ISIS and the Syrian army itself. Women started women's houses to give women education and economic help. Abused women were rescued from their homes and given the options to live in villages for women and children only to allow them to heal outside the presence of men while they learn. And when asked, many of the male soldiers in the area are the first to admit that without women, Rojava wouldn't be. No not every man has made this miraculous change in less than a decade, but the changes that have been made and sustained in an area that is steeped in toxic masculinity and patriarchy tied to religion are huge, and they feel unreal. They feel too good to be true until you hear about them, read them, hear the men and women talk.

Restorative justice is also a huge focus. Police aren't ever the first on scene for smaller, nonviolent issues, and even when violence does occur, the community is just as involved as police are. When a murder happens, local community organizations take the perpetrator to authorities who will send him to trial and sentencing, but those same organizations also immediately set out to make sure both families are at peace and when that is achieved through mediation and negotiation, a feast with both families takes place. Even ISIS soldiers are given less than 20 years in prison and put through de-radicalization programs. They're educated and given the same resources as the Rojavans jailed for their offenses. The goal is to stop the root issues causing any crimes to happen not to merely punish someone for breaking a law.

Anarchy is not chaos. It is community support and outreach.

My happy place looks a lot like this. People who have no power imbalance where all different kinds of folks have equal footing in society, where problems are solved by involving the community, where the point of the society is to provide and give everyone a chance to have some sort of success. It's not a wealthy region partly because it has had to fight so hard to exist and remain existing, but there's not a wealth gap that leaves some in mansions and others on the streets dumpster diving to survive either which is no small feat given everything they've faced and that at its height nearly 3 million people lived there.

I don't know the future of Rojava. Turkey has made good on threats to push them from their homes by force and is backed by Russia. For a good while the U.N. presence and some U.S soldiers kept them at bay, but Trump pulled our troops from the region in late 2019 which has left the region with less stability forcing the Rojavans to ask for help from the Syrian regime that tried to erase them, and for now there seems to be a tenuous agreement but Assad has never made good on such agreements. I rage and cry every time I think about the nearly 1 million people that Bashar al Assad has murdered often in the most heinous ways because we could have stepped in. We could have, for once, saved lives instead of taking them. But we have too many scars from wars raged by careless, reactive men and too much fear anytime we hear about involving ourselves in foreign issues. 

But...it also gives me hope that people aren't eternally destined for capitalistic greed, that community isn't lost and, that it is, in fact, possible to provide for everyone and for everyone to work together to ensure it. And if I have to have a queer femme commune to do it on the small scale in an apocalyptic America amidst another civil war so be it.

___

I'm going to link the other participants in this this month's Subject Swap, but before I do, I recommend the podcast Women's War about Rojava hosted by Robert Evans and written about a trip he took there as a journalist to find out if what was being written about it were true. And I also recommend the two part episode of Behind the Bastards (also hosted by Robert Evans who was in Syria itself for awhile) about Bashar al Assad. Both are incredibly informative and a lot of what I've written here was learned in those podcasts as well as the many articles online and the Rojava website and reading literature. 

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/08/theres-no-place-like-home-for-covid.html

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

A ‘lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/?p=14953

Pat-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/08/secret-subject-swap-when-time-stood.html

Sixteen Bombs

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 6 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My subject is: You are a senior in high school again and graduation is upon you. What are you looking forward to? Vacation? College? Career? Moving out of mom/dad's house? Plans?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I have had a few prompts now about going back to high school and reminiscing in that part of my past, and honestly, it's straight up not a good time, bro. I didn't enjoy my high school experience. Overall I have very few fond memories from that time and even fewer people I remain in contact with from back then. And I'm perfectly okay with that. You won't see me singing "thanks for the memories" any time soon.

It kinda feels like a downer on what is supposed to be a fairly lighthearted prompt, but who am I if not a chronic oversharer whose third favorite topic of conversation (after murderers and abolishing prisons) is her own personal trauma??!?

I surely wouldn't be me so here we go.

I didn't attend school on campus my senior year. I was enrolled in a program that let me take college courses that counted as credit for both college and high school, and even though my counselor advised against it as most students took 1 or 2, I went to college full time that year. Why, she asked...

Maybe it was the fact that I saw the person who raped me several times a week in the hallways? The person who got away with it, who stole me of innocence, killed the me that I had been? The one who had no bad memories and no PTSD and who didn't care about justice?

Or maybe the bullying? The death threats in my locker about being openly queer and protecting other queers? The fat jokes? The crazy jokes? The physical threats that used the word "dyke" like it was a dagger? Weirdo. Bitch. Lesbo. Carpet Muncher. Fat cunt. Stupid whore. Ugly. Gross. I heard it all.

Or maybe just my shit mental health from having one abusive and two mentally ill parents who finally divorced and went off the fucking rails crazy at each other and us and with new partners, having no support from either one especially ESPECIALLY for the rape and my weight and no access to mental health care on top of the rest?

No couldn't be that. I just wanted to be too grown. I needed to be a child while I could.

Guess someone should have let my parents know that 🙃

so the best part of my senior year experience is that I actually didn't have to go to high school at all. No bullshit lunches being mocked endlessly and having to stand up for my friends. No classes with the same people all day long every day of the week. No getting up early. well, except for that one physics class i took and even then i didn't go half the time. my absences there didn't count for anything unless the professor included it in their grading. It made my life a little easier, but it didn't do anything to ease the pain of everything I'd gone through until then. It just meant I didn't have to spend 8+ hours 5 days a week watching my back at school just to go home and do it some more.

I don't know what it was like for other folks, but when I was accepted to a fairly large University, my first choice and still in Georgia, that would have almost entirely been paid for by the Hope scholarship, my mom screamed and cried and threatened me about leaving her and how I must not love her if I wanted to leave. I couldn't even look forward to moving away from here. I was never going to be allowed. At least not to go to college and even now, when Im a mostly grown ass adult, the fallout from moving even within a 4 hour radius would be huge. Suicidal threats and tears...and here's the thing, it's not even about me or love for me or wanting what's best for me. It's about rejection, imagined or otherwise. It's about control, about knowing where I am. it's not the least bit healthy, and it's the boundary I have yet to be able to put up--to just pack things up and move. I'm fucking 38. It shouldn't be this way.

Here's the thing...

I cannot tell you how many times in my years at high school, in college or not (where I still got called a dyke btw), I wanted to die. That didn't stop in my senior year, and it certainly didn't give me anything to dream about or plan or look forward to. I was barely hanging on by the moment. I lived one hour at a time. Sometimes minutes.

Do you understand how hard it is to be absolutely torn down by almost everyone around you, to be damaged and beaten and assaulted and bullied, just to have your only out ripped away from you? To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that going away to college wouldnt be the last dream ripped away from you because of someone else's inability to be supportive and loving and encouraging?

What would I look forward to if I had to do it all over again?

Still breathing? I guess? I'm still here. I suppose that says something.

____________________________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

A ‘lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Opinions Are Like Assholes: everyone has one but not everyone wants to see it

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 7 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

my “Secret Subject” is:

Are you able to be close friends with people who think differently than you do? Or do you think that friends have to have similar core beliefs in order to be close?

It was submitted by: https://Bakinginatornado.com

                                                ___________________________________________

I feel like my answer to this might not win me any friends, but by the end it will probably become clear that I'm okay with that.

Fundamentally, I don't think I can truly answer this question without clarifying what we mean here by "think differently."

Since having chronic fatigue syndrome I experience a lot of cognitive issues. Memory loss, executive dysfunction, loss of balance, trouble speaking words even when I know what they are and trouble recalling words period, trouble thinking clearly... It's a long list. And I guess at this point my brain works differently than what is "normal." I'm not neurotypical. I have friends like me. I have friends who are neurodivergent on a developmental level. And I know people who are neurotypical. We literally think differently, and not one group of us is better or even better off. We're different. End of.

Are we talking about someone who thinks pineapple not only belongs but MUST be on pizza? Because despite how "differently" I feel about it--like someone who eats it is the wrongest kind of wrong-- I love someone who is like this albeit begrudgingly. I feel some kind of way about this blasphemy to everything that is good about pizza, but who does it hurt for him to eat it? (Obviously besides my own feelings.) Superficial opinions like this are fine. You want to put mayo on things? Knock yourself out even though I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. Don't like the color purple? Ok. I don't get it but I can still love you. Hate The Big Lebowski? Well, I might not think much about your taste in films, but ultimately you're only hurting yourself here so what does it matter in the end? I mean, I'd like you better if you got my constant references, but we could still be close. I have core fundadamental beliefs about foods and movies and music that I think are important to who I am as a person, but if someone I love doesn't agree I silently judge but we can still be close.

I suppose though this prompt is perhaps more about politics and those kinds of core beliefs. And once we cross into that territory things are no longer simple. When we discuss politics we aren't usually talking about how we think the President should use the Federal Reserve to react to an impending recession. We aren't typically talking about states using income or sales tax to fund their budget. Admittedly even those topics can understandably get heated, but more times than not we're arguing over fundamental differences in VALUES. How I feel about socialist programs, queer rights, feminism, reproductive health, anti-imperialism, and nationalism involve respect for humans, help for humans, and basic human rights aligns with how I view the world, society, and what I see as important. These things are no longer just an opinion. They're a reflection of my morals and concern for my fellow human beings. It's not the same as saying you don't like cake which, yeah, fucking sucks but not nearly as much as it sucks to know someone thinks my trans friends shouldn't exist or have access to equal rights. How can I have people in my life that think so differently about my and my friends' and my own child's right to exist? How can I be friends with someone who thinks people like me who can't work are a drain on society? How am I supposed to respect someone who doesn't think food and water are basic and fundamental human RIGHTS????

The answer is an easy one for me. I can't.

I can't wait around for some asshole who doesn't understand that my kid's genderqueer identity doesn't mean he's mentally ill to finally get that he's a person just like anyone else. I can't spend my time arguing with them over it hoping maybe they'll come around. I can't wait for the Trump supporters that still lurk around in my life to finally see what so many others do... it's not just a "think differently" situation anymore. I have to look out for my own and my kid's safety. I was out of the closet in the 90s. I know how much is at stake. I've been threatened with violence from the moment I was out and throughout my life. I don't have room in my life for people who lack basic respect for human life unless those humans love, live, worship, and have sex the exact same way they do.

My point is that at the end of the day we don't "think differently" when it comes to politics more often than not. What we have is an absolute mismatch of values, ethics, morals, and understanding, and with that difference comes a lack of respect and unconditional love that is an absolute requirement for a close, personal relationship. Can we be friends? Maybe but probably not. Not really. But we absolutely can't be close. At best I can stand in the outfield and not wish illness or harm to come to you or yours but that's as good as it's going to get.

When it comes to having those same core values and beliefs but thinking differently about how to achieve those goals or the root causes of identifiable issues or perhaps how to make changes to or reform or deconstruct systems, there's less at stake here. When I think of someone who is "different" than me, it's not these issues that come to mind because we don't "think differently" in my eyes. We have a different approach. We aren't so fundamentally different that working together and having mutual respect is impossible. And there lies the crux of the issue--how differently we think really matters in how to approach this question and these relationships.

I've never minded cutting people out of my life that treat or react to people badly. I'm not gonna be your friend if you don't tip in the u.s. either. I mean really. I don't mind cutting out people that don't make me feel good, that I groan when I see it's them commenting or texting or calling. I have one life, and I'm not giving it to people who make it shitty. The end.

                                      _______________________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

A ‘lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch

Dinner Doggies

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 7 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

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I didn't have the best childhood. It wasn't easy by any means. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol, a lot of abuse. We were fairly poor, always struggling, and I had so much anger for so long, so much resentment, that I didn't get to have a "normal" childhood. I didn't get innocence and sleepovers and the warmth of those memories. I couldn't even remember a lot of things beyond a few fuzzy and painful events I'd rather not have retained to be honest. There are entire years that seem missing.

Lots of people have decided for me that those memories are repressed and that I need repressed memory therapy--that 80s craze that took the U.S. by storm right alongside Satanic Panic--but all that has been debunked multiple times over. The truth of the matter is that my brain was in flight or fight mode so often, things often didn't stick. When those parts of your brain are activated to help you process a situation and make quick decisions, memory suffers. Self preservation processes take precedence over making it a memory.

Unless I was actually smiling and enjoying myself away from my parents, I don't remember much, and I'm okay with that. I don't have to remember to be whole. I don't need those memories to work through my shit. I've done so without them. And--MOSTLY--gotten over the resentment.

But boy do I remember the things that got me through. Toys, a few shows, movies, games...anything that helped keep me grounded or let me soar.

One of my best escapes was books because we were in such a rural area that cable was never an option, and we only had a super small collection of movies (most that we did watch were rented). I read a book a day at least more often than not...sometimes while hiding out in my closet or outside under a tree picking ants off my socks. I read to leave home, to be free, to live a better, easier, funnier, whackier, warmer life built by someone else's words in my own imagination. Or sometimes my own words. I started writing my own stories in grade school-- ghost stories scarier than my own life obviously with some cuddly cute cats thrown in the mix. I often went for the dark side. If it was weird or scary, I wanted to read it. I started Dean Koontz (who I never much liked) and Stephen King by 6th grade. There were entire worlds of spooky shit built in my head because it gave me something to be afraid of that I had chosen. It wasn't a ranting and raving high person who was supposed to love me and take care of me making my heart race in fear; it was a make-believe monster not a real one. I had control over it. I could put the book down. I could turn the lights on or hide under the covers or fling the book across the room. I wasn't beholden to that fear the way I had to be at home. The devil you know...

None of those make for good dinner guests though. Stephen King characters? Nah. I mean, I guess some people have a Pennywise fetish since Bill Skarsgard played IT, but that ain't me. We ain't having that man over for dinner and hoping things get freaky...well. freakier.  I have my likes but uh...we're just gonna move on.

One of my favorite set of memories is playing "airplane" with my little brother. We'd drag out these cheap little sleeping bags we had into the middle of his bedroom floor, open them completely, and spread them out. We'd have "seats" set up like they were on the aisles of the plane, and and put some of our toys in to fill up the plane. Then one of us would fly and one would be on the plane ride. We'd go anywhere in the world we wanted certainly away from home and the pain we had there. And our in-flight movie would always be Scooby Doo Meets the Boo Brothers.

By no means was this particular movie relegated to just fake flights. We had it on VHS and literally wore it out. There was one scene in particular where Scooby fell out of Shaggy's jeep (it was just Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy in this one not the whole gang and mystery machine) into a puddle and jumps up chewing his nails and freaking out (and makes a noise very much like my Dane now makes when he gets a scare) and we'd howl in giggles until we hurt and rewind it to do it again. It was just our thing. And to be honest, it's still something I run to when I need a pick me up, when I'm really sick, or when I need to decompress. It's been a favorite for nearly all my life.

My great Dane and Scooby would eat and drool and be very much like Scooby-Dum, Scooby's cousin, and Scooby when they had a reunion--two goofballs being absolutely clumsy and full of love. And okay maybe a little bit dumb too but I do have to say great danes are really smart dogs despite how often they trip over their own feet and look like they're completely clueless. Scrappy would probably join in the fun but try to be the Boss like it always is with smaller dogs and giant ones. The new, tiny dog we have now that I wrote about last month is absolutely the Boss of this house.

But since me and Shaggy go way back, I imagine we'd get a little high (y'all know Shaggy be smoking weed), snack, and listen to some of my vinyl records while he was super awkward. I say that like I wouldn't be. I'm always super awkward.

Sounds like a perfect evening. And very possible we wouldn't even have to have a monster-free night given my company. There's always some rich guy in a Creeper mask waiting to steal a fortune right?

Oh how much that applies.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado                  https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/03/remember-when-secret-subject-swap.html

Spatulas on Parade                    https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer             https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom    https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/03/secret-subject-swap-ireland.html

A ‘lil HooHaa                             https://hoohaa.com/?p=14739

Southern Belle Charm                     https://www.southernbellecharm.com

The New Addition

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words were: dog, coffee, remote, denim, cotton, and fake

they were submitted by:

https://www.southernbellecharm.com

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It's a bit serendipitous that I got these words with "dog" included. My little family has had some big changes over the past couple months involving dogs.

In early December, our senior lady Georgia, a chiweenie of unspecified age but definitely older than 15, got sick, needed emergency surgery, and never came out of anesthesia. It happened so fast. She was definitely getting older, but we honestly thought we had a few more good years. She had a lot of energy, still bossed Rost, our great dane, around, had herself a full time cat boyfriend, and was absolutely spoiled. So it was unexpected to say the least. And devastating. It didn't help that we lost another dog tragically in August to a random snake bite that I wrote about for one of our challenges last year. 2019 was not at all kind to our family, and the loss of Georgia felt like the nail in the coffin.

The cats were depressed, howling for her night after night. Rost missed her. And our holiday smiles were absolutely fake. It hurt. And it hurt badly. This was our 3rd pet loss in 3 years (my last great dane in early 2017 to old age), and we were feeling it. Anyone with pets will tell you those losses are as hard as any others--sometimes harder--and the grief involved is very real.

We weren't necessarily looking hard to find another dog. We weren't sure we ever wanted another. But I had scoped out some rescue and humane society pages missing the little tapping paws following me around the house. I had come close to going to check out a couple and even emailed for more information, but in the end, it just wasn't the right time or fit. The idea of bringing another dog in so soon was weird. Georgia's shoes could never be filled.

I did ask my mom to keep her ears open for me. She has a much bigger local network than I do. I hide out in the country and pretty much cut off 90% of people I know locally for my own sanity. But she works for the courthouse and my stepdad owns a bait and tackle/gas station/convenience store type thing (what a combo...get a sausage dog and a bag of crickets when you fill up your tank) and has for a long ass time, so they know a lot of folks. I told her we weren't in a hurry to move on, so she didn't have to go asking around, but it still wasn't even two days later that she sent me a message about a little shih tzu that had been surrendered to her vet by its owner who was too sick to take care of it anymore. Chewbacca was his name, and he certainly looked the part.

I debated on it a few days. The kid wasn't sold. A shih tzu didn't really seem like our kind of dog, but he certainly looked so differently from Georgia, and that would help ease the pain of comparisons. A couple more days passed and we found out that someone who was supposed to meet the dog didn't, so we took a chance. The possibility of him coming home with us seemed remote.

But then we met him.

He looks like a little werewolf baby. Long hair with gray, black, and white and sometimes a tinge of brown. He has a little floof of white cotton on his chest and a tail like a feather duster. We brought him home on a week long trial. The first meet with him and Rost went better than expected, but it felt so weird having him here. I wanted to cry but also hug him and never let him go. By the second day though, he acted like he's been here forever, so more or less he cbose us. Even the cats took to him pretty quickly considering he's only been here 3 weeks, and his personality keeps shining out more and more. He plays with us, with Rost. He knows his new name. He weirdly never answered to Chewbacca so we call him Fizz which is short for Fizzgig from the dark crystal. If you know the movie, you know why. Haha. He's trained, never pooped in the house and only had two pee accidents. He's good in his kennel but of course he's already sleeping in the bed all night.

I have my mid morning coffee while he dances around the kitchen grinning with his bottom teeth. He sleeps in the bathroom with the Dane while I shower, and anytime I actually get a chance to sit down, there he is begging to be held like a baby so he can sleep.

Now he just needs a ripped denim jacket that says Teen Wolf. Way better than a letterman jacket. And he'll fully look the part of the household cryptid.

He's certainly no Georgia, but that's kinda the point. There could never be a replacement, so why try? He's got a personality all his own, but one that fits in better than I ever could have imagined, and it's been so little time. I can only see it getting better.

Nothing really takes away the hurt and missing our old lady...but Fizz is certainly making those smiles and laughs genuine as hell, and for that I am so thankful.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/02/a-song-raven-and-shrimp-use-your-words.html

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2020/02/middle-aged-slump-feb-uyw.html
Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-ransom-of-sally.html

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/02/use-your-words-thongs-vs-flip-flops.html

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Medicated Musings https://mymedicatedmusings.blogspot.com    

First But Not the Greatest Love

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 9 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is: With Feb we think about love. Who was your first love? Do you know where they are now? Are you friends?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I've talked about my first real love a time or two on this blog. It's not a sore subject. The relationship ended badly and our attempt at a redo ended even worse. But overall, I don't look back in anger. Oasis taught me not to anyway.

Let me back up a moment and focus on the qualifier "real" that I used here.

I had what I called, at the time, relationships in both middle and high school, but these were extremely superficial. I mean what else can they be in middle school? I had a longer relationship in high school, and I really was infatuated with the person at the time, but I can't reflect back on it and say I was in love or loved them. It was something to do really, and I didn't even cry when it was over. I was relieved. I wasn't in the right place to meet my high school sweetheart, fall in love, and marry at 18. That wasn't who I could be nor was it who I wanted to be. I was still exploring my sexuality, still not processing having been assaulted, still with so much resentfulness over the shitty childhood I had and how fucking awful living with my father was and then my stepfather after that. It wasn't an easy time and having been assaulted at such a young age, I wasn't every going to be able to have an intense romance. My innocence was long dead along with the child I never got to be.

I was so very angry.

It was the year after I graduated that I started this first real, serious relationship with one of my good friends all throughout school who had expressed having feelings for me but at the time I hadn't been ready to date. Anyone. It wasn't personal. I just couldn't do it. It took awhile for me to get to a point where I thought I was emotionally ready for it and to recognize the feelings as genuine and not some silly crush or feeling obligated because he had those feelings. Even then I recognized we're so often taught as young women to prioritize boys' feelings and shit over our own. Realizing the genuineness of my feelings did very little at first though. It was some kind of heartache for awhile when I first figured things out. I thought I had ruined my chance by never wanting to take it further when he did.

It all worked out eventually, and we moved in together when we were just 19. I really think that was our downfall. It was too much responsibility too fast. He had been really sheltered and never had to do much for himself. We both had issues, dysfunctional families... I had unresolved trauma. I HAD to get out of my mom and stepdad's home. It was all too much too soon, but we kept at it for a year and a half. Trying to manage an apartment and college and jobs and still make time for each other and our friends really made enjoying our new found freedom pretty difficult. It didn't help that my past with other dudes and me being queer made him insecure. And it certainly didn't help that I had like zero self esteem. We were an absolute mess.

To be clear, I don't think if we had gotten together under better circumstances that we might still be together. I'm so vastly different than I once was, and he's more or less an adult version of the same guy. A few more wrinkles, a little less hair, some life lessons, and even more responsibilities now than when we failed, but essentially he's the very same person I once knew. I had to go through literal hell to address my traumas and be reborn as something mostly whole. Kintsugi for the proverbial soul isn't exactly easy. And the older I've grown the more my humor has changed, the more I've addressed my innate biases, the more I've become intersectional, a feminist, and a far leftist. I would hardly recognize the girl I was when he met me, when we were together, or even the girl he left behind. Ive fixed so many cracks, she's virtually unrecognizable.

Life happens, as they say. And I'm okay with the direction life took for me. It hasn't been easy, sure, but I'm okay. I'm at peace with WHO I've become even when life isn't easy, and I think coming from where I did that's really the best I can hope for. It's better than a lot of folks who walked a similar path.

We aren't friends. I don't think we're allowed to be because new partners get insecure about friendships with old ones. At least that's how it usually works around here. (On his end not mine. I don't go for that shit in my personal life ever.) I do miss the friendship, but if I'm really truthful I know it wouldn't be much of one even without insecure significant others. We're too different. My values and humor are too different. And I draw a hard line on people who use vulnerable populations as a punchline. I stopped even being Facebook friends with all the people we hung out with at the time especially since one of those is a trump supporter who literally grabbed me by the crotch one night WHILE we were dating and they all still make excuses for it. Go figure.

We did talk a few times over the years expressing our responsibilities in why things went bad without reminiscing, apologizing without it being awkward. I don't duck or run when I see him in public which is rare now that I'm housebound. So it wasn't awful even though it really was my biggest heartbreak to date. And it wasn't something I held onto resentment over. But it's never going to go down in history books as a great romance or in my own history as the one that got away. But I did love him, and I'm thankful for everything I learned about myself and relationships along the way.

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Here are the rest of the participants!

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

A 'lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Medicated Musings https://mymedicatedmusings.blogspot.com

A Different Kind of Hurt

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out, see what words they got and how they used them.

I’m using: fun, funny, family, fracture, and fully

They were submitted by: https://Bakinginatornado.com

CW: pet death

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About 9 years ago, we found a family of chupacabras in our crawl space.

Okay, it was actually puppies, but when we pulled them out covered in mud and fleas and spider webs, they were more chupacabra than not. 6 funny looking little things who didn’t even have their teeth yet and eaten up so badly with fleas that our house was infested and yipping like mad because their mom was nowhere to be found. The mom ended up being a neighbor’s dog who didn’t take too kindly to us removing the puppies from her spot, but something had to be done, so there we were with 6 puppies to bottlefeed, clean, and help take a poop every few hours.

Fun.

No, really. Once we got them cleaned up, dewormed, and got rid of the fleas, it was a great time even if it was a bit stressful. Each pup would sit in my lap for feeding times and take the bottle like it was the best thing in the world with their little ears wiggling and tails helicoptering like mad. I’ve played mom to a lot of creatures, but taking care of puppies was one of the best. They loved eating popsicles and fought in their own poop and made me laugh harder than I had in a long time.

That’s how we got Layla.

Between people I knew at work, friends, and family, it wasn’t terribly hard to find homes for 5 of them, but that was the limit here in this rural area. We hadn’t planned on having another dog at the time, but here she was, an almost solid white mutt with a few small brown spots that had way too much energy to burn and was already part of the family. All the others had been brown and black, so she already stood out from the rest of the pack pretty early on. Truth be told, I was glad no one else wanted her, and here she stayed for 9 years. Until early August anyway.

It was a good 9 years. She was healthy with never any concerns or problems other than a penchant for chewing the tip of her tail when she was bored. She was a handful, though, always. Digging holes, never learning to walk on a leash unlike any other dog who has ever lived here, always barking her head off when she wanted something… One time, she drug me down the front steps so hard I had a bruised ass for weeks. WEEKS. I can’t pretend she was some kind of saint with the years of destroying toys in seconds and holes I can never get to fill all the way, and the tons of mud brought into the house, but she was loved wholly and completely.

Then things changed a bit.

Last year the day before Hurricane Michael hit, we found her woozy and unable to stand. She had recently lost some weight that had me a little concerned, and I had been trying to put some back on. After years of rescuing animals, I have a pretty good handle on things and a pretty good first aid kit, so that afternoon, I tested her blood sugar levels on a whim because of her wooziness and weightloss, and it was through the roof. 533 when normal ranges are 80 to 120. No vets were open because of the hurricane, but I had an insulin dosage to start with and knew what to do, so we headed to town to try and get the supplies we needed. After Walmart shockingly refused to sell the insulin to us because they were closing early (15 minutes after the time we arrived) due to the Hurricane (that wouldn’t be here until the next day), we dropped $150 on a bottle of insulin and got her stable.

It took months though to really figure out how to keep her stable, though. Dog diabetes is really pretty rare in comparison to humans, and a lot of vets don't see many cases of it or know too well how to treat it without involving a specialist, so we couldn't get too many answers there beyond what I already knew to do. We changed food time and time and time again. The amount she needed each dose kept going up, and I was really at my wit’s end with it all. Twice a day dosing, fighting with her to eat…so much money had been spent on supplies and food changes and supplements. She hated eating the new food, and so many tears were shed in frustration that nothing we were recommended to try actually worked. I ended up doing my own extensive research into things. It was then that I figured out that sometimes the type of insulin I was using sometimes didn’t last long enough for dogs, and I tried a new schedule. We moved it up to every 8 hour shots. She had to be pricked and stuck 3 times a day, and we were tied to the house unable to ever really get away because no one else could handle that kind of schedule even for a short while, but it was working. We were kicking diabetes’ ass fully, no holds barred, and it was wonderful. It was a kind of triumph I can’t even describe, and since all this really fell on me, we grew even closer. Who wouldn’t?

She was outside for a little while a couple weeks ago like she does from late morning through at least her afternoon insulin dose. She was always an outside dog, a mud lover through and through. She would pass a fresh bowl of water to jump in a mudhole and lap it up like it was the bestest, tastiest treat in the world. But when I went out that afternoon, I knew something was wrong. She was on the ground, not moving, and I felt my heart fracture right then. I was so confused. She’d been fine even a little while after she went out. Her blood sugar levels were still normal that morning, and nothing had changed. I really thought maybe with my brain fog I fucked up the dose (something I’d never done and always checked and rechecked). I was so ready to blame myself because the diabetes was the only thing that had ever affected her even if it being the diabetes didn’t make any sense.

It ended up being a snake bite.

We found the marks when it was time to bury her. And, honestly, I don’t know how to feel about that. We did so much work to get her back stable and healthy. I gave up so much of my life to making sure it happened, to keeping her healthy and from succumbing to her illness just for something so entirely random and unavoidable to take her. It’s a risk where we live especially with an overgrown field right behind our property, but we haven’t ever seen many. It was never something on the forefront of my brain, that worry. And now, I’m just lost. I still get up the same times I always did, and I check the clock when it’s close to her dose times because it’s what I’m used to. I miss her, and I love her still even with her hardheadedness and muddy paws, even with her care costing way more than I could afford.

If you’ve ever lost a pet, you know that feeling. You love and are loved so intensely and unconditionally like no other friendship you ever have, and then it’s just…gone. It’s a hurt like nothing else that nothing really fixes but time eases, and I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to write concerning family but her. I still have a houseful of fur family to help me through, but it’s not the same without her. Hug your furbabies and feel free to share stories if you can relate.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado  https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2019/08/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-use-your.html

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-world-we-live-in-uyw-august-2019.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2019/08/house-haunting.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2019/08/use-your-words-dont-shoot-messenger.html

The Impossible Dream

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 8 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.


My subject is: What is one thing that you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet?

It was submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Content warnings for mental abuse, fatphobia, bullying, eating disorder talk, internalized fatphobia

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I’m scared I will die before I ever learn to love my body as it is.

I don’t remember a time when body image wasn’t an issue for me. Even before I really understood what being “fat” was, my family made comments about my weight and my body. My grandmother forced me to eat salads with next to nothing on them besides lettuce and tomato and told me I needed to diet. My dad would sing “fatty fatty 2 x 4 can’t get through the bathroom door to me” and laugh. Crisco, lardass, fatty… those were constant refrains at home.

The sad part is I wasn’t even fat. My body was softer and rounder because of changes and hormones. That’s all. I look back at photos of me from then and see the roundness of puberty and wonder what the fuck anyone else was looking at. Fat? Everyone around me carried extra weight. It’s built in my genes. It was projection, pure and simple, and a whole lot of internalized fatphobia, but knowing that NOW doesn’t at all erase the voices I heard so much for so long that still plague every single day of my life.

And it didn’t end there. Because I did carry extra weight into my teens and even now as an adult as a response to both trauma and because it’s how my body is and will always be, those voices aren’t just family but peers, friends, people I found attractive that I wanted to be closer to…

Fatty.

     Crisco.

          Fatass.

               Too fat for me.

                    You’re a fucking joke

                         Fat bitch.

The years I have spent hating my body are a travesty. Honestly. This is the only body I get, and here I’ve been hating everything it was for nearly all of my life. I didn’t love the softness, the curves, the chubby tummy, the stretch marks…but I also didn’t appreciate my strength or flexibility or how it carried me through the difficult life I had without letting me down. Now that it fails me regularly because of my chronic illness, I miss the things it used to do for me, the things that kept me going. Now that I don’t have them I look back and wonder why I couldn’t appreciate them while I had good health.

I failed to see what anyone else claimed to see when they looked at me, anyone outside family that is. It was something to hide and abhor for far too long, and even now it’s a struggle to accept my body as it is much less love it. Compliments never stuck. The idea that anyone could love me as I am, because I hated it all so much, was an entirely foreign concept. I spent most of my life keeping everyone away, keeping my guard up, breaking dates, refusing even after the best of 1st dates to ever go on a 2nd one.

There is such a big part of me that understands I am worth more than my weight or the size dress I wear. I understand that hating myself changes absolutely nothing. I know without a doubt that I really don’t have any business hating my body at this age in my life. I am loved and satisfied and I look fucking fly when I get dressed up, makeup on, and quirky purse on my shoulder. But I can’t get rid of those old voices, the doubts, the lingering inability to accept that this is how I have always and will always look give or take a few pounds.

I see people in fat acceptance/liberation spaces and understand they have bad days too and bad weeks and fight it just like I do. But another part of me sees those photos and longs to be that comfortable in front of a camera in crop tops and bikinis—to smile and lift double fingers at anyone who says a cross word. I envy those carefree moments that I never seem to have enough of. I long for days in a stretch where I can cancel out those ghosts in my head of a former life where those opinions mattered so much to me even while I shouted so loud that I didn’t give a fuck. I want to exist in a state that isn’t plagued by guilt for being what I am and guilt for not loving me as I am simultaneously.

I have struggled with eating disorders and body dysmorphia , dieted myself into sickness, starved, binged, purged… I struggle with the idea that I can fight so hard with these issues and still have a lot of privilege because my body is smaller than a lot in the spaces I find so much comfort. I struggle with the mirror, and I struggle with stopping the incessant calorie calculating. Every. Single. Day. Is. Full. Of. Struggle.

I want the confidence to wear a crop top, to even go out of the house without moments of panic about how I look… what I’ve always wanted is to have peace, to be comfortable, to be able to just accept me as I am at any time in anything for more than a few fleeting moments. I’ve wanted that as long as I remember, and here’s hoping I might finally do that one day.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2019/08/passion-and-repercussions-secret.html

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2019/08/little-girl-squirrel-sss-august-2019.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/

Never Ever Give Up Hope https://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Our Prime Years https://ourprimeyears.com/secretsubjectswap-aug-9-2019

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2019/08/secret-subject-swap-here-comes-bride.htm

Pry My Candy Corn From My Cold Dead Hands

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 8 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My Secret Subject” is:

What’s something that “everyone” seems to be obsessed with and you just don’t get it?

It was submitted by: http://thelieberfamily.com




This kind of had perfect timing. I've been talking about this with people for a few weeks now.

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Like anyone else, I have a lot of things I just haven’t been able to get into while people I know sing their praises. TV shows, foods, drinks, movies, brands, activities… The list is pretty long. I couldn’t get into Breaking Bad. I don’t like The Walking Dead. I didn’t even bother with Game of Thrones. I hate root beer. Don’t even get me started on black licorice. Baked beans are the devil. The Notebook was trash. I can’t stand South Park or Family Guy. I have never ever wanted a Coach bag or a Louis Vuitton. I don’t shop at Sephora, and I’ve never seen Frozen even though I love Kristen Bell. I don’t have any plans on ever watching it either.

Can we just take a moment to think about my sick ass trying crossfit? Or watching…*shivers*…football?

Is it even possible to picture me wearing anything that isn’t black or that doesn’t make you want to hold an exorcism?

But those are just me. Those are my opinions and tastes. I don’t think not liking any of these things makes me special or makes anyone else objectively wrong except maybe the black licorice. Sadly, though, that’s exactly the thing that everyone else is seemingly into that I just don’t get—shitting on things other people love for likes and attention instead of just letting people enjoy the things they love.

Youtube is rife with videos titled “how to eat [insert food]” or “how to drink [insert beverage]” and thousands show up on facebook every year of regular ass people throwing away perfectly good food in order to show how detestable something is supposed to be. Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, milk, candy corn, a whole ass plate of Chinese food, and pineapple on pizza are all examples of the subjects of these videos. Adults ordering food or buying whole 2 liters just to film themselves throwing it away in the name of controversy on social media just kinda blows my mind. At no time is that more apparent than Pumpkin Spice season. Hordes of memes making fun of pumpkin spice crowd the spaces of our social media timelines making fun of anyone who dares like a traditional spice selection dating back hundreds of years used for all sorts of baked goods. How dare we, eh? It’s not enough for these people to *not* care for it themselves; they absolutely have to label and tear down every person who does. “Basic,” ridiculous, obsessed… a whole stereotype of woman has been built upon liking a fucking mix of spice.

Why?

We live in a world plagued by huge issues. Times are pretty scary especially for women, minorities, and LGBTQIA folks. We aren’t sure of the future. You might even say we’re living in a somewhat dystopian nightmare that we thought we would only ever read about in novels as a cautionary tale. Instead of tearing down folks for finding some small joy in life that absolutely hurts no one else (unless you want to debate the tenants of capitalism), here’s a novel idea.

LET PEOPLE ENJOY THE THINGS THEY ENJOY.

I can’t watch Game of Thrones for the assault scenes but I don’t trash on the many friends I have that watch it.

I don’t like pineapple on pizza, but I live with someone who does.

I would rather stab my own eyes out than watch a single episode of Family Guy, but I know dozens of people who get a laugh out of it.

Try it with me. Let people have their loves, their fandoms, their tastes, their passions…

Let men wear their hair in a bun without being yet another person to question manhood as if masculinity has anything to do with a hairstyle.

Let people eat their candy corn which must not be that fucking bad since it has existed literally for decades doing just as well as ever.

Don’t debate tea over coffee. Let people drink whatever they want.

Drink Dr. Pepper or milk or Mountain Dew or KoolAid or even Fanta if you choose and let other people choose too.

If a person wants to eat/drink/lather in/bathe with/spray themselves with/gargle with what we call “pumpkin spice” why not try letting them without cutting them down into some narrow stereotype?

Be a Converse person or Vans or even Uggs AND LET PEOPLE WEAR WHAT THEY WANT.

Repeat this after me: no one’s choice of clothing or food or drink hurts you or takes away your choices. And not liking things that other people like makes you no different than everyone else who doesn’t like it.

At best, when you gang up together and talk shit about things other people enjoy, styles they have, and activities they enjoy, you look like a bully, and your children are watching.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

Never Ever Give Up Hope https://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com


Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Visual Literature

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

school ~ books ~ difficulty ~ letter ~ budget

They were submitted by: https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

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This is my 5th year homeschooling. I think. Time has lost all meaning in the brain fogged existence I lead planning lessons and grading papers and begging, pleading for this child to pull more adjectives out of his ass than "good" or "interesting" when writing an essay and to actually learn to write in such a way that I no longer need a decoder ring to decipher almost every letter in the answers to the questions he's assigned.

There are not enough words in the English language to describe the difficulty of teaching a child, at least MY child, at home. It is a drain of patience and my precious little energy considering what is already drained with me/cfs, and I have realized all too keenly that my child was perfectly constructed so as to be able to tune out almost every single thing I say. He thinks "skimming" counts as reading. He skips rules and takes shortcuts and refuses to ask for help even when he desperately needs it. He loses every. single. pencil. I buy him which I blame all on his father's half of his genes (only half-jokingly).

It's a lot of responsibility. I have to know what the average kid in his grade level should be learning, what the state standards are, and the laws involving homeschooling. I have to make it fun but informative, challenging but ability-appropriate, varied enough to hold his interest but not so varied we lose the sense of routine that helps him stay focused despite being unmedicated with ADHD. I have to prepare this kid who is terrible at written tests (but gets the answers 100% right every time if we do it orally 😑) for a standardized test every 3 years to make sure we're on track with our learning. It's work, hard work. We don't always get along during the school day. My expectations and his motivation are hardly ever at the same level. We end a lot of days stressed the fuck out and in need of a breather.

But.

I don't think either of us would have it any other way. He has not yet answered affirmatively each year when I ask him how he wants to handle things regarding going back to public school, and even though he drives me crazy so much of the time...I like the control I have over what he learns, and I can make sure his education is tailored to him personally. We choose classes together. I choose the books which means I don't go with the ones tailored just for Georgia students used by the school system here that whitewashes much of history and skips a lot of evolution. It's my budget not a school budget dependent upon the overall test results of the students. If we need extra books, we get them. We handle our own supplies and skip a lot of germs. We work on our own schedule meaning we stay up late and sleep in most of the time. If we need a day off, we take one and make it up elsewhere. When he has a grip on a lesson, we move on, and when he doesn't, we repeat it. It's less stress for him than going to an actual school, and he still gets plenty of socialization. And we're obviously doing something right since he tested more than 2 grades above his level this past year in reading comprehension, language skills, and math.

So difficult...but also worth it.

Right now we're doing pre-algebra, biology, grammar, ancient world history, and computer fundamentals. But I also added film studies in place of literature this year, and so far it has been amazingly fun and has gotten us sharing movies and talking about them more in depth every school night. I happen to think visual stories can be as important as written ones, and the work that goes into them can be fascinating. Understanding lighting, color, continuity, transitions, camera angles, and the like can tell you more about the stories you're watching. We've watched Citizen Kane, Jaws (compared to Wet Hot American Summer), What We Do in the Shadows, Almost Famous and This Is Spinal Tap. We watched parts os Sin City and clips from Clerks. Pan's Labyrinth, SLC Punk, Taxi Driver, Snatch, and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World... and we're only 3 weeks into the year. 

I share with him insights as we watch pointing out the elements he has read about in his film studies class. I taught him why the color palette of Jaws is so calm and neutral or why Sin City is in mostly black and white. He learned what film noir is. He knows now why some characters are bathed in light and some in shadow in certain scenes. We talk about why a shot is wide or why it's a close up, what the intent is for the viewer and what the director is trying to say without saying it with dialogue. We looked at Guy Ritchie's signature montages and how he uses transitions and narration so successfully and so uniquely that you can watch a movie and just know when he's the director. And we have so much left to cover--genres, directorial style, plot, chopped narratives and straightforward ones, what defines a "cult classic," scores that change the entire movie, movies that are a product of the culture in which they were created and more.

Now that we've started, he can't stop. Even when he watches movies for fun, he notices the things we've gone over. Finally my child can actually listen to me talk about something and appreciate the knowledge I'm giving (knowledge I had to teach myself)! It only took how many years?! Either way, I'll take this win and put it in my motivation bank for the next time I look at his worse-than-doctor-scribble handwriting that might say plates ate the sordid phantom or might say hydrogen is good.

***Before I go, I do want to add that he listens to me about other things because I like to talk shit about historical characters. it's fun and more relateable for me to call Christopher Columbus an incapable, lying mf than what he can read in a book. it's like he has Samuel L. Jackson for a history teacher.

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Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/08/no-more-pencils-use-your-words.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2018/08/plastered.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2018/08/puppies-and-tornadoes.html

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2018/08/use-your-words-parking-lot-picnic.html

My Brand of Crazy https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com

Road Trippin'

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 10 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

Road trip: You’re given a rental car and a credit card that is good for accommodation, food, gas and entrance fees for 10 days. The offer includes as few or as many passengers as you may fit into your vehicle. Where are you going and with whom?

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Even just a couple years ago, I might have been the perfect person to answer this prompt but as it stands...well...it's just no longer in the cards. But here we are anyway. I gave it my best shot. 

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Road trips are not exactly possible for me anymore. I have me/cfs, and that means my ability to do things I once enjoyed is limited. And it also means my energy levels are pretty fucked. A 45 minute trip to the grocery store wipes me out (not including the drive time). Traveling isn't really in my goals anymore...at least not a 10 day trip. I do have a small trip tentatively planned to visit someone I write later this year, but honestly I can count the times I have been even an hour from home in the last 2 years of being sick on one hand.

That's not to say I couldn't dream up some amazing places to go if I wanted, but part of me being able to deal with this illness is being realistic. I think some people get by living in their heads and pretending things are different, and I get that. But for me that kind of daydreaming is just a reminder of the things I'll never get to do. I don't want to pretend I'm ok and live in a fantasyland in my head, and I don't really want to try and push through for the sake of doing something I really want to do, that I've talked myself into despite knowing I shouldn't, because the blowback of being bedridden for days and not being able to speak right or focus or take care of my responsibilities as a parent, pet parent, and homeschooler just isn't worth it. I have to accept life for what it is now, and the more I do that rather than pretend things are different, the better I deal with it all both physically and mentally.

I'm not selfish though.

My son's father and his new family have been on several trips to Disney World, and the boy always has fun, but more than anything he really wants to see the Harry Potter part of the Universal Orlando theme park. We read those books together a couple years ago, bonded over them, and really fell in love with the wizarding world. We cried and learned lessons about life and love and figuring out who we are. It was an amazing journey we shared, and if I had not gotten sick not long after we read them I would have taken him by now as much for myself as him.

Universal Orlando is roughly a 6 hour drive for us. I can't drive it safely, but he and I wouldn't have to go it alone and could take as many rest stops as I needed. And when, inevitably, my energy gave out, I could spend my time in the hotel away from all the chores and responsibilities that usually keep me up and moving long after my energy levels crash. It certainly wouldn't take 10 days to drive to and see the park, but we have animals to care for anyway--special needs cats and dogs that no one can medicate but me. Believe me when I say I've tried to hand off that chore when I'm feeling my worst. It always ends up being on my shoulders though.

So there I would be along for the ride and missing some of the best parts of the park hiding away from the lights and sounds that always end in pain and resting up for the drive home. Bet your ass I'd also be feasting on candy from Honeydukes though, and elated over the few trinkets from other parts of the Hogsmeade shops I'd manage to snag.

I may not have the life I once did, and I may have to forfeit many of the big dreams and goals, but I'm okay with a life lived in small moments. I kind of have to be.

Also, if it weren't for the kid being a Potterhead, I'd opt to stay home, sell the trip, and take a mental journey with some shroom chocolate.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/05/movin-on-secret-subject-swap.html

The Lieber Family Blog https://www.thelieberfamily.com/2018/05/game-on.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Never Ever Give Up Hope https://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2018/05/cat-burglar-ss-may.html

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

My Brand of Crazy https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com/